We may be slightly biased, but we believe that London is one of the most important locations in watchmaking history. Home to Greenwich Mean Time and its Prime Meridian, it is the site of workshops owned by Thomas Tompion, George Graham and Thomas Mudge – and it is the city in which Rolex was founded. There are many layers to London’s horological past and we wanted to give an overview of its many highlights, important personalities, and significant advances.

We’ve taken the liberty of breaking this city’s history in timekeeping into four sections in an effort to simplify a near 500-year-old story. We look at the time before the lever escapement and the period before industrialisation, then move on to industrialised London and finally the modern day. All three represent distinct eras in watchmaking, and while the products of each are remarkably different, a striking continuation can be seen throughout.

We can go back to the time of King Henry VIII where records show the king wanting to import talent from the continent in all forms, but especially in clock and watchmaking. Many of these craftsmen were forced out of their own country due to religious persecution, with the most significant of these being the Huguenots. This desire to import craftspeople came from a lack of watchmaking tradition in the country at the time. There are records of tower clocks being produced domestically as far back as the 1300s, but the trade hadn’t significantly progressed by the 1500s in comparison to what was being produced on the other side of the Channel.

According to the Clockmakers’ Museum in London, some of those who came over and settled in the capital include Francis and Michael Nouwen and Nicholas Vallin, mainly around Blackfriars and Clerkenwell, where the clockmaking industry went on to develop. The trade took serious hits at the end of this period from outbreaks of the plague, the Great Fire of London and the Civil War.

Despite this influx of foreign tradesmen, native talent was starting to come to the fore. Bartholomew Newsam became the clockmaker for Queen Elizabeth I in the early 1580s and King James I called upon his countryman, David Ramsey, to fill the same post. Ramsey went on to become the first Master of the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers. It was the founding of this guild that started the process of professionalising t