Proposed Workshop Porch And Clock Housing, Rear Of Silvern, Four Roads, Port St. Mary.
Mr. Kneale, the Applicant, carries on business as a high-class joiner and cabinet maker, and in his spare time is an amateur horologist, restoring and repairing antique clock cases and movements.
He recently acquired a two-hundred-year-old two-train turret clock which was originally fitted to the tower at Canonteign House, near Newton Abbot, Devon, in 1815, for Admiral Pellow, Lord Exmouth, but which is believed to have been made a few years earlier. Admiral Pellow fought at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. The clock was made by Thomas and Jonas Pollard of Exeter, and is of very high quality, having Harrison’s Maintaining Power and six-spoke wheelwork.
The movement, dial, hands and pendulum have been stored in a barn near Christow, Devon, since removal from Canonteign House in 1980. The dial, three feet in diameter, is of spun copper with Roman numerals, the hands are counterbalanced copper and the cast-iron pendulum is seven feet long. It is Mr. Kneale’s desire to fully restore the clock to use and to create a suitable housing where the movement can be seen and can be maintained in full working order. The strike train, although in working order, would not, of course, be in operation.
The proposal is to create a simple structure tight against the existing staircase access to the first floor workshop. This will form a porch enclosed on three sides at landing level in which the pendulum will swing, visible through the west window, and through which the balance weights will drop. The movement would be housed in a simple clear-glazed enclosure above this, accessed by a fixed metal ladder and of minimal dimensions. The restored dial will face out over the open fields and allotments to the west. The weights will utilise the full drop to ground level through the first floor porch and past the landing into the storage space below, and will be encased. Being constructed against the existing concrete access stairway, the structure is relatively discreet, but the clock would be visible from the allotments, affording a public service.
Photographs are attached showing the movement, dial, hands and pendulum before restoration.
The Applicant wishes to carry out this project as a serious work of conservation and historical record, particularly in view of the bicentenary of the Battle of Trafalgar and its connection with the South of the Island, and trusts that the Committee will afford their support.
Pendulum
Dial & Hands
Movement
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