WILLIAM CONGREVE ESQ. A VERY RARE LATE GEORGE III DETACHED ESCAPEMENT REGULATOR CLOCK sitting atop a rectangular mahogany podium with canted reeded corners and a lockable rectangular trunk door, the extremely large and heavy movement is protected by a delicate mahogany strung, curved and glazed lift-off cover. The movement has large, curved-top plates which together with the dial plate are arranged in a rafter style and are joined by 10 double tapered pillars, central to the plates and dial are large circular apertures which give a fascinating view of the movement which itself is weight driven with Congreve’s extreme detached escapement which impulses the pendulum every two seconds. The dial which is in the style of a classical temple facade is engraved “Patent Extreme Detached escapement Invented by Wm. Congreve Esq.” and features two intersected silvered and engraved dials, the upper dial with a single hand reading double 0-60 seconds with batons at 2-second intervals, the lower dial has two hands reading against batons for minutes and Roman numerals for hours. This clock is a very significant find, being the most complete of Congreve’s surviving one-second pendulum clocks and the only one known outside of the Royal collection - A previously unknown and recently discovered longcase pedestal clock by the inventor of the Congreve rocket. Only two others are known and they are both in the Royal Collection, one in Buckingham Palace and the other in St. James’s Palace where they are noted in the Palace records as “the troublesome clock”. Both were radically altered by Frodsham and Vulliamy who converted them to chronometer escapements. They retain their double tapered pillars and rafter plate appearance, but all traces of the unique pendulum support and detached escapement are absent. The extreme detached escapement clocks were made for Congreve by James Moxon and all are of rafter type construction with his signature double tapered pillars and “Harrison” type screws. Clock Number 3, as we call it, came from a hunting lodge in Eastern Europe and it would be exciting to speculate that it could have been a Royal gift, as Congreve supplied, almost exclusively, George III and his son, the Prince of Wales

178cm high