The Clockmakers’ Museum

Discover the world’s oldest clock and watch collection in its new home at the Science Museum. The collection includes more than 600 watches, 90 clocks, 30 marine chronometers and a number of fine sundials and examples of hand engraving, mapping the history of innovation in watch and clock making in London from 1600 to the present day. Assembled by the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers and once located in the Guildhall, this remarkable array of timepieces traces the story of the capital’s clockmakers—from their first marine chronometers and mechanical clocks through the evolution of the wristwatch. John Harrison was the inventor of the marine chronometer. Among the collection’s highlights is the fifth chronometer he made, which he completed in 1770, and a four-month duration longcase clock by the father of English watchmaking, Thomas Tompion. An intricate British-made watch, the Space Traveller II, is now on display. Watchmaker George Daniels made almost every part of this watch by hand in the early 1980s.