Watch and Clock Industry in Coventry

A lot did actually do that sort of thing, which could easily have contributed to their going out of business! There were quite a few employers even in places like the courts off Thomas St, or Spon End; the thing is, once they employed enough people and made enough money (and those employed were dotted all over the place - they were rarely on the premises, except for the bigger employers), they moved somewhere better - always assuming that they did actually manage to grow their business enough. Don't forget that (a) they could have inherited money, too, and (b) they also often had lodgers or workpeople living in with them, which would have helped reduce the cost of rent or mortgage (Mostly rented, so far as I can see). If they didn't grow their businesses enough, they almost certainly went under, or reverted to being employed, as the industry started to decline around 1890 or 95. On the assumption, though, that it was pre-renumbering, that would make it about 59 now wouldn't it, which must be close to AOR?

Opposite direction I think Keith, possibly in Craven Terrace whose dwellings did have improbably huge workshops behind.

Spon Street. The building was replaced by the British Legion, now a community centre, next to the subway entrance. The road in the foreground is Crow Lane which is now just an access road running parallel to the Ring Road behind the Odeon complex. That car by the way appears in a number of photographs from different sources which suggests it had a connection with the business?

"The Odeon complex"? Does that mean the old Gaumont/Odeon cinema has gone? Regarding the car, who knows? Maybe the photographer's car, intended to add some "reality"? Birds looks a bit familiar. And was that the London Laundry next to it?

No - the "Odeon complex" refers to the new cinema next to the SkyDome off Croft Road, adjacent to the Ring Road The old Gaumont/Odeon cinema remains as The Ellen Terry Building, Coventry University

Another 19th century watch & clock makers of Coventry - Sanders (Clock & Watchmakers)

Thanks Morgana I'd like to bet the 'Clarendon Street' referred to on that web page is actually the one in Earlsdon rather than Aston, the one in Earlsdon being a known centre of the watchmaking business at that time.

Yes I agree as on the front page to bring this link up it did say they started in Coventry in the 17th century. Seems a lot of business started in Coventry, they expanded to other towns

People tend to forget that there was also watchmaking in Birmingham. The biggest firm was William Ehrhardt, who had a large factory, which didn't cease until at least the 1920s. Ehrhardt's sons as well as the main business set up the British Watch Materials Manufacturing Company in Birmingham in 1900. There were others, too, but I would have to look them up. Ehrhardt, unlike most Coventry makers, had a large factory making 500 watches a week by 1880. There were few small watchmaking businesses in Birmingham, as I recall, unlike Coventry. However, there isn't a Clarendon Street in Birmingham, only a Clarendon Road, which is close to Ladywood. I wouldn't have thought that an area where watchmaking was likely. And Loomes (who isn't always accurate anyway) only has "James Sanders Birmingham 1880" as an entry - not exactly inspiring confidence. Loomes also has Albert Saunders in Birmingham in 1880.

Hi all I stand to be corrected, but I believe that B'hams watchmaking was a spin off from Coventry. Coventry watchmakers bought their precious metals & jewels from B'ham. In fact, Johnson Matthey still supply precious metals to this date, whether they supply jewels, I am not sure nowadays.

It certainly wasn't for Ehrhardt's. William Ehrhardt was going to start up in Coventry, in 1855, but thought that the competition was likely to be too great, and decided on Birmingham instead. Another Birmingham company was the case maker Aaron Lufkin Dennison, which became part of Avery-Dennison, who made very good cases until the 1960s or 70s. I believe it still 'exists' as part of another group. As I said, Birmingham watch firms were usually much bigger, mass producers. Coventry makers bought jewels from Coventry jewel makers in the 19th century, Philip. There were quite a few, and it was a job that women usually did - it needed more dexterity than most men could easily provide. Johnson Matthey never sold jewels to my knowledge, only precious metals. They mainly supplied the Birmingham jewellery trade. Cookson's is another precious metal supplier in Brum, who did, and still do, the same. The Birmingham makers did one thing that Coventry ones didn't - they supplied spare parts. Most Coventry watchmakers were very small businesses that were forever changing their designs, and few seemed to have given any thought to spares. Ehrhardt's on the other hand was set up "on the American system" - long runs of machine-made watches, with a regular spare parts supply. This made them cheaper to buy, and cheaper and easier to get them repaired. I have some Ehrhardt's spares, but I have never come across any for a Coventry maker, not even Rotherham's, with one exception - Williamson's (who were actually a London firm). The latter were required to supply spares for their military watches supplied to the WD in WWI. The most common failure was a broken balance pivot, and a competent watch repairer could easily make a new staff (I can and do so still) but it's MUCH cheaper if you can buy one as a spare part! The cost of purchase and ownership compared to mass produced Swiss and American watches was undoubtedly one of the various reasons for the demise of the Coventry watch trade.

Thanks for that information keith i found that very interesting, my brother has 6 Rotherham watches and a big collection of other watches mostly silver, but he lives in France now and i vary rarely see him these days,but i have told him about this site so perhaps he may join.

Thanks for the find, Morgana - it makes really interesting reading

Yes, I have some Rotherham watches. They made very high quality ones, and towards the end of the 19th C made designs much more like the Swiss, with 3/4 and 1/2 plate movements, club foot in-line levers, and no fusee; they were still very expensive though. Most Coventry (and London) makers stuck with fusees (making the watches bulky and complex) with full-plate designs, right-angle levers with a tangential (dead beat) escapement that had to be "hand fitted", making their products expensive to make. I heard some years ago that the last man who could hand fit an English escapement died, in his eighties, about 35 years ago, and no-one now knows how to do it. Swiss and American watches didn't need any hand fitting. It was said that you could take 10 American watches, strip them, jumble the bits, and reassemble and all would work perfectly; try with even two English ones, and they wouldn't go! We look back on things like 'hand made' with nostalgia, but the world moves on, unfortunately. BTW - there were clock makers in Coventry long before the 19th century, so the topic was reasonable. On the subject of clocks, manufacture in Coventry didn't echo what happened in Birmingham; there, by 1770, clocks were being, if not mass-produced, certainly being produced in standardised form and significant numbers, and that continued up to about 1860/1870, along with dials and false plates. A few Coventry clock makers survived well into the 19th century, but they probably used Birmingham movements by then - anything else would have been far too expensive, and definitely would not have been competitive. It's rather strange, really, that the watchmakers didn't learn from that!

A few months after Jay and Jim set up Lexor I, too, joined them from GEC where I worked alongside them in the very small Radio Survey Group - finding locations and carrying out path loss testing for the aerial towers that were then built to carry the TV and telephone signals up and down the country. Jay was all front and a great chap to work with - always used green ink! Jim was quite mad, as you say and enormous fun! The tricks he got up to at GEC are nobody's business! All the time I was with Lexor, Jim had his office/laboratory in the original premises owned by the Barbers at No. 25. Did you know that he made a pram rocker? When their baby cried, the pram rocked! Mad genius, quite mad! By the way Jay (in character) didn't have an estate at Moreton Morrel, he rented a lodge house there, rather than buy, in accordance with his strong socialist principles. Yes, his father had had a coopering business at Cadnam in Hampshire. I was at Lexor from 1960 to 1970. Initially we operated from rooms at the rear of Andrew Barber's parents house and he started working there as a lad. They we took the old watchmakers' building at the rear of 31 Allesley Old Road. It was my initial task to have the building refurbished and equipped so we could use it. Having done so and staffed the place, I was the Supplies Manager, Sales Manager and general factotum for several years. We took in a number of GEC acquaintances, notably Ron Hollis who was a GEC wireman for telephone exchanges but became the works foreman. During refurbishment, we came across watch parts between the floorboards. Just as at the GEC Radio Works at QVR, we would find bicycle (Rudge?) ball bearings everywhere. In the garden path at 31 I found a watch drive chain from the famous Coventry chain drive watches. I think those ultra miniature chains (like bicycle chains) were made by Reynolds. Lexor's main product to start with was the 'Disboard'. A mains multi-socket board such as you can buy now in plastic from hardware stores. The variety was wide, 13Amp, 5Amp, 15Amp, even mixed! Various finishes, lead lengths and plugs. I still have and use a couple of design prototypes - probably illegal now but they've outlasted many of these plastic ones. I brought in Ken (name escapes me for the moment) also from GEC and he, eventually after I had left, took on the separate Disboard company but I see that has now dissolved (http://bizzy.co.uk/uk/00818119/lexor-disboards). Towards 1970, we moved the Disboard production to a converted garage (shed!) at the top of Duke Street, round the corner in Craven Street. Lord Street was just after my time, though it was being talked about. Ralph Treadwell came in later to look after the sales side and I concentrated on the supply chains for for the Disboards, power supplies and the delay lines. Great days and I have a photograph of the celebration on the occasion of the 10,000th Disboard! Ah, yes, the 'totty'! It was my job to interview staff - my, that was good fun! My office was on the opposite side of the stairs from the reception office. Yes, Rowley Road was a disaster that I could see coming and that was why I began to look elsewhere. One of Jay's more grandiose plans that scared me, as I was starting to bring up a family and I could see where that was leading. There was no way there could be sufficient sales to afford that. Why Jay, Jim, Ralph and Bernard Florsham, the accountant, couldn't understand that, I'll never know. But there you are and that's history.