London

Before 1600 most small clocks and watches in England were imported or made by immigrants, many in London.^1, 2

London clockmakers had belonged to the Blacksmiths' Company. After years of opposition they won a royal charter from Charles I on 22 August 1631, giving their new Company control of the trade in the City and ten miles around.^1, 2

The Company’s founding Master was David Ramsay, a Scot who had been watchmaker to James I; the noted maker Edward East sat on its founding court.^1, 2

The Company says apprentices served about seven years, usually living in the master’s house, and that freedom of the Company came by apprenticeship, patrimony or redemption.¹

The finest makers worked in the City and around Fleet Street: Tompion and Graham in Water Lane off Fleet Street, Mudge later at 151 Fleet Street, Quare at the King's Arms in Exchange Alley.^3, 7, 8

Huguenot and other immigrant craftsmen were part of the trade: Tompion's workmen included Huguenots, the Debaufres kept a shop in Soho, and the Geneva-born Emery worked at Charing Cross.^{3, 10, 11}

The Company guarded its members' interests: it opposed Barlow's repeating-watch patent in 1687, by Wikipedia's account, and fought Charles Clay's patent petition of 1716 on Quare's behalf.^12, 13

Its members' names were worth forging: the Company complained of Amsterdam makers signing work with Tompion's, Quare's and Windmills's names (1703 in the DNB, 3 July 1704 in the minutes cited by Struthers).^5, 14

In 1765 an Act of Common Council required City watch and clockmakers to be freemen of the Company, and in 1766 it was granted its livery.^1, 2

During the eighteenth century the trade moved north into Clerkenwell, Holborn and St Luke's, where a 1747 list counts separate trades from movement makers and wheel cutters to dial enamellers, gilders and finishers.^4, 5

Clerkenwell's peak came in the 1790s, with almost 200,000 watches a year by Davies's estimate; Goldsmiths' Hall assayed over 191,000 watch cases in 1796.^4, 5

A 2017 thesis on the trade records that 15,084 watches were exported from London in the year to 5 January 1793.⁵

The Company told Parliament in 1797 that about twenty thousand Londoners worked in the trade.⁵

Clerkenwell remained a watch and clock district into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, especially around Northampton Square.^5, 15

The Company’s museum, founded in 1813, is now the Clockmakers’ Museum at the Science Museum, where Tompion’s watch of about 1671 is kept.^2, 16