Despite knowing nothing about clocks, my engineering curiosity finally got the better of me and I plucked up the courage to indulge in a bit of judicious bending of what I now know to be called the crutch to equalise the Tick with the Tock, and to my surprise and delight, the clock ran beautifully. It turned out that my wife's grandmother had always wanted her to inherit the clock and, since I had displayed such empathy by working my magical cure, the clock thereafter had our name on it. However, Mary's parents emigrated to Australia shortly afterwards and the clock was dismantled and stored in their attic.

Ten years, one marriage, two children and four houses later, we at last had room to accommodate the family heirloom and the time came to retrieve the dismembered clock from the roof. It had suffered somewhat in storage and the glass in the hood door was shattered. In my efforts to avoid inflicting further damage on the clock, I failed to notice a gap in the boarding to the loft floor. The resulting chaos of fright, annoyance, indignity, embarrassment and comedy I leave to your imagination. Suffice to say that the letter which Mary's father received rejecting the subsequent insurance claim resulted in me forever being known as the family's "uninsured peril"!

All of this just served to ensure that the clock rapidly became a real member of the family and, although no maker's name was visible on the dial, we were keen to learn as much about it as possible.

Links to other pages about our Bancroft clock:

Introduction (this page)

The Clock as an Heirloom

Researching our Bancroft Clock

Comparison with the Loomes clock