Time and time again, Part 1 - The Simeon Smithard clock: Ken Gibbs

A horologist, I am not. My wife maintains that I am a pure horror but, for precision, I’d call myself a horophile.

A Westclox alarm clock somehow didn’t impress me. It was rather crude in design and tended to keep me awake long before the alarm went off, in those far off days before deafness allowed me to sleep in peace, including in my university days when I’d sleep right through the alarm. I was delighted when I received a Christmas gift of a wrist watch – but the delight didn’t last too long as the strap parted and the watch was found not to be shock-proof; all part of the learning process.

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The Simeon Smithard clock

BJUN: (Before joining the UN). My first encounter with something worthy of the name ‘time-piece’ was on a second-hand (no pun intended, please note) stall at our secondary school fête in 1956. It came in the guise of a clock embedded in an ornate black marble surround which was seriously chipped, but the clock had a delicate face and hands which I couldn’t resist. It cost 15 shillings (sterling), half of which I had to borrow to make the clock mine. It went with me back home which was, in those days, 1,500 miles away. The clock, in the suitcase, was so heavy that the train conductor said I should be charged over-weight, but because the clock was in apparently such poor condition, he let it pass. I proudly presented the clock to my parents who admired it, but suggested that I take it to Mr Povey, the local clockmaker in Bulawayo, for him to appraise it to see if it was worth being cleaned and regulated.

Mr Povey was ecstatic. The clock was dated around 1850 and employed a Paris movement. It was cleaned, polished and regulated and returned to our home where it sat on the mantlepiece in the sitting room for a good few years before I qualified as an engineer and was sent abroad, at which time my parents suggested that I take it with me. I suspect they were slightly offended by the damaged marble surround and were thus relieved when I reluctantly took it back from them.

Before the clock started its foreign journey, I extracted the mechanism from the marble and, noticing a silver plaque which had never been polished so was illegible, I took it off the marble and – well – polished it. It read thus:

Presented with a tea service by numerous friends throughout the kingdom to

Mr Simeon Smithard of Derby

In appreciation of his long and valuable services in the temperance cause.

September 8th, 1862

Many were the times that I raised my glass of single malt whisky to Mr Smithard.

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(DTWUNICEF = During Time with UNICEF): Being in possession of numerous pieces which would make up a working clock, I cast around for a suitable case for the clock. Only when I heard of a cabinet making concern in Peshawar (Pakistan to the uninitiated) that specialised in making bespoke furniture, I went and visited their works. So taken was I by the quality of the work that I immediately designed a military chest and, separately, a surround of the clock, also to be made in rosewood. The date must have been around 1987 when I was posted to Quetta for UNICEF, so a side-trip to Peshawar was relatively easy to arrange.

The clock was fitted into the new case and worked very well for many years until we returned to Britain when we celebrated by having the mechanism cleaned and checked (after all, many of our possessions had suffered from the monsoon weather) – and the mainspring re-tensioned – by a Fellow of the British Horological Institute, and it remains a 15-day, chiming clock with adequate accuracy and proud provenance. No Swatch can come near the charm of Mr Smithard’s clock !

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Ken Gibbs can be contacted via kengibbs1941@gmail.com

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