Grandfather Clock

Floor standing Clock betrween six and eight feet tall. Originally named the Long Case Clock, this is actually a descriptive name as the clock’s mechanism, driven by a falling weight, and regulated by a pendulum, required a long cabinet body to house both. The Long case clock with its longer pendulum, allowed for a slower tick extending the life for the clock through decreased wear on the working parts.

William Clement is acknowledged as creating the long case clock in England in 1670. The clock evolved from wall clocks, as the need for more accurate clocks grew, Clements observed that making the pendulum longer improved the clock’s accuracy. Eventually he put a long pendulum into a long case so the clock could be placed on the floor. The concept was adopted by other makers but these early clocks’ cases were plain wooded boxes with a wood door; the tall wood containers resembled a coffin in many people’s eyes, and “coffin clock” is what they began to call them, rather than “long case clocks”.

Why Grandfather Clock?

In 1876 Henry Clay Work stayed at the George Hotel in County Durham, England, where he found an old grandfather clock that no longer worked. When Henry asked about the clock he was told that it had always kept perfect time, in an era when clocks were not so accurate as today, this was unusual. However when one of the brothers who owned the hotel died, the clock started losing time and could not be fixed. It then stopped alltogether when the second brother died, aged ninety, and it was never repaired. Henry wrote a song based on the story, which became hugely popular. In the song he referred to the long case clock as "Grandfather's Clock” and after that people began calling all long case clocks, grandfather clocks.

Modern Quality Movements

Over time improvements and refinements’ have seen the Grandfather clock evolve into the modern clocks you see today. Although these have similar characteristics and styles to antique clocks: tall wooden, some with ornate carvings and mechanisms that chime. Today’s modern precision manufactured clock movements particularly from Germany are far superior to their historical predecessors. While there are other movement around, Clocks and Chimes only use quality German clock movements in pendulum long case floor and wall clocks.

Lyrics to Grandfather's Clock
by Henry Clay Work
can be found on the Grandmother page of this site.