The documents printed below have been selected to illustrate the range of sources available and the level of information they provide. They have been grouped by subject under 6 main headings, each with subheadings. The following headings have been used:

A. General sources

B. Business records

C. The clockmaker's working life

D. Installation and maintenance of church clocks

E. Customers’ records

F. Clockmakers in court

When more than one example has been used, the individual items are arranged in date order. The documents within each section are numbered, and each item is cross-referenced to the main biographical entries using the numbers shown (e.g. Al).

A. GENERAL SOURCES

Trades directories - a selection

A1. WATCH & CLOCKMAKERS. Bedfordshire 1785

A2. WATCH & CLOCKMAKERS. Bedfordshire 1830

This book is not about clocks and watches. It is about the Bedfordshire people who gained their livelihood by working with them, whether as makers (in the strict sense of the word), journeymen or skilled employees, repairers, or retailers - anyone, in other words, who regularly described themselves as clock and watchmakers, placed their names on horological artefacts, or worked on clocks and watches at any date before 1880.

The cut off date of 1880 has been chosen for a number of reasons. First, few clocks and watches were actually made or finished locally after the middle of the nineteenth century. By 1880 people who claimed to be clock and watchmakers were often no more than retailers, perhaps also looking after clocks and undertaking basic repairs. By this date, too, many self-employed tradesmen combined clock and watchmaking with other forms of employment and by the end of the nineteenth century it became common for the larger firms (e.g. E. Deacon & Sons of Luton) to be engaged in a much wider range of commercial activity. Furthermore the use of individual names gave way to business identities (e.g. John Bull & Co. of Bedford). Not all these developments were new - look, for instance, at the advertisements of Edward Appleford and Thomas Willson of Dunstable in the eighteenth century - and they can be easily overstated, but taken together they make 1880 a sensible date at which to draw the line.

At the time of writing - although information from the 1891 census returns will be released in January 1992 - the most recent census available for public access is that for 1881. As a rule of thumb, it may be assumed that information (beyond the cut-off date where relevant) on all people engaged in the clock and watch trade up to and including 1881 will be found in this book. People and businesses first mentioned after 1881 (e.g. listed in the 1885 Directory) are excluded.

It is, of course, primarily a biographical book based on genealogical rather than horological research. My own knowledge of horology is confined to limited experience of examining turret clocks and to what I have gleaned in recent years from membership of the Antiquarian Horological Society.

This list is based on a variety of sources, but aims to show in a consistent format the main details of each known apprenticeship. The following details may be included: Name of apprentice, his parentage or origins, his home town or village, his age or date of birth, his parent's trade, the name of the master to whom he was bound, the man's occupation, the term, the premium paid, the date of apprenticeship or registration, and the source.

The following source codes are used:

• 1. Original indentures (Repository and reference number also stated)

• 2. Inland Revenue apprenticeship records:

  • (a) Checked at source (Public Record Office)

  • (b) From Mrs. Hilary Jenkinson (ed) “A list of Bedfordshire apprentices: 1711-1720” in BHRS Vol.IX (1925) pp.147-176

  • (c) From A. E. Bartlett (ed) “Bedfordshire Masters and their Apprentices 1763-1774” (Ms. index at BRO, based on Society of Genealogists’ index)

  • (d) From index at Society of Genealogists

  • (e) Provided by Alan Treherne (based on Society of Genealogists’ index)

  • (f) From V & N Uffindell “Cambridgeshire Apprentices 1763-1811” (Typescript at Cambridgeshire R.O. - 1988)

• 3. Atkins, C. E. (ed.) Register of Apprentices of the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers 1631-1931 (1931)

• 4. Bedford Borough apprenticeship registers 1615-1843 (Typescript calendar at BRO)

• 5. Harpur Trust (Bedford Charity) apprenticeship registers 1761-1814 and 1840-1841 (BRO refs: X 109/1, X 171/62, and HT 8)

• 6. Settlement examinations (references stated)

• 7. Nineteenth century census returns 1841-1881 (date stated)

• 8. Other (Full reference stated)

Note: Out-county apprentices and masters marked with an asterisk (*) had

a real or suspected connection with Bedfordshire.

ANDREWS, W. H.*, to George Buckmaster of Royston, Herts., clockmaker, for 7 years from 24 June 1793. Premium £30. Indentures 4 Oct. 1793. Registered 8 Nov. 1793. [2f]

ARESUM, Forty*, s. of Thomas Aresum of Southwark, to John French, Citizen and barber-surgeon of London, 1736. £4. [2d - IR 1/14 p.198]

BARFOOT, Thomas, of Hockliffe, to John Adams of Chaigrave, blacksmith, 7 years from 25 March 1712. £4. [2b - IR 1/42 p.65]

BATEMAN, John, to William Beaumont* of St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch, watchmaker, 1756. £10. [2d - IR 1/20 p.213]

BATES, Benjamin, to Thomas Sharp of Leighton Buzzard, clockmaker, 1761. £20. [2e - IR 1/22 p.203]

Notes on format of entries

As explained in the preface, this section includes people engaged in the clock and watch trade in Bedfordshire up to and including 1881. People and businesses first mentioned after 1881 (e.g. listed in the 1885 Directory) are excluded.

To ensure consistency, the information given for an individual maker includes (where possible) date and place of birth (or baptism), parentage, apprenticeship or training, relationships to other makers (named in bold), places of work (with dates at given addresses), services advertised (e.g. clock and watchmaker, whitesmith, jeweller, bookseller etc) with dates, brief family details, and date of death. In addition, (a) examples of known clocks and (b) details of turret clock cleaning/repair work are given for each maker.

The headings for individual makers give the full name, with (in brackets on the right-hand side of the page) place(s) of work and working dates. Working dates are given in preference to dates of birth and death etc. partly because this is what will chiefly interest owners of clocks, and partly for simplicity (i.e. to avoid duplicating detailed information given in the text).

Where a family provided a dynasty of makers in a particular place (e.g. the Peppers of Biggleswade) the entries for the individual members of the family engaged in the clock and watch trade appear in alphabetical order preceded by a general note on the family and business. In such cases it is not always possible to determine which member of the family was responsible for a particular clock or paid for work on a church clock, e.g. where the clock or documentation gives the surname only. The additional information (a and b) is therefore given for the whole family rather than for the individual makers.

The information on clocks and watches (a) comes from a variety of sources, but chiefly from the notes of the late T. W. Bagshawe. Some of the clocks noted as being at Luton Museum may have been on temporary loan, and intending viewers are advised to contact the Curator for up-to-date information. Information on turret clocks (b) may be assumed to have come from Churchwardens’ accounts or other records of the given parish unless otherwise stated.

Timekeeping in Bedfordshire

Early horology

From the earliest times, the peoples of the earth have found ways of monitoring the passage of time. This is evident from the survival of primitive shadow clocks, sundials, hour glasses, and water clocks. A preoccupation with the measurement of time coupled with the advance of scientific knowledge eventually led to the invention of mechanical clocks with escapements. This development is believed to have taken place in Italy in the twelfth or thirteenth centuries. Early mechanical clocks are illustrated in mediaeval illuminated manuscripts, and examples of early clocks of remarkable sophistication may be seen in museums around the world.

The annals of Dunstable Priory record that in 1283 a clock was made to stand over the pulpitum in the church - a reference interpreted by C. F. C. Beeson to be “the earliest English record of what is considered to be an escapement controlled clock”. This is certainly the first documentary evidence of any clock in Bedfordshire, although there is some uncertainty as to its form.

Domestic clocks

Early references to house clocks in Bedfordshire are rare, and we can find no mention of clocks and watches in the early wills and probate records. A watch is mentioned in the will of Benjamin Pigot of Lower Gravenhurst proved in 1606. Two inventories of 1619 provide further early references - one to a watch worth 20s. among the effects of Henry Richardson of Blunham, and the other to an hour glass owned by John Rogers of Chaigrave.

The picture is undoubtedly incomplete, since most of the early Bedfordshire probate inventories were destroyed in the nineteenth century. A detailed search in the wills might provide further references to clocks and watches in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Other examples of documentary sources mentioning “clocks in context” include inventories and sale catalogues. For instance the marriage settlement of Thomas Bygrave and Elizabeth Whitbread, 1717, includes a schedule of household furniture in a farm at Cotton End, Cardington, including “a clock in the hall”.

List of Bedfordshire Clock & Watchmakers By Place of Work

Clock & Watchmakers in Towns and Villages Adjacent to the County

This chapter looks at another form of international travel greatly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic: the mobility of tertiary education students. Again, the focus is on the Portuguese context, and as in Chapter 3, the discussion engages with developments before and after the start of the crisis, with the decade prior to the pandemic characterized by a sustained period of expansion, followed by uncertainty. However, as suggested by the statistics presented in Chapter 1, while the status of shortterm exchanges – credit mobility – is unclear due to limitations in the data, there are some signs that levels of student migration to Portugal actually increased during the pandemic.

Such developments reflect the fact that the country has a distinct international student mobility profile, perhaps different to the European norm, having become a destination for visitors from neighbouring nations, via programmes such as the European Commission-supported Erasmus platform, as well as those from farther afield, including Africa, Asia and the Americas, with many of these students staying in Portugal for long durations (Sin et al, 2017; França and Cairns, 2020; Malet Calvo et al, 2020). As noted in prior research on this topic, it may have been logical for these latter students to stay in place after the start of the crisis due to a lack of opportunities to return to societies more deeply affected by the pandemic (Cairns et al, 2021a; 2021b; Malet Calvo et al, 2021).

Looking at the broader picture, we also wish to contribute to the student mobility research field. The topic generated a huge volume of academic studies and grey literature during the ‘mobility turn’ era (see Chapter 2). This material suggests that there has been an expansion and a diversification of the internationalized learning experience, which came to integrate formal, informal and non-formal pedagogies as a means of generating valuable forms of mobility capital (Cairns 2021a, 2021b). For this reason, having already looked at some of the available statistics in Chapter 1, the main part of this chapter focuses on the qualitative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, reflecting on international student life at the most intensive periods of lockdown.