Clock & Mechanism - St Michael - Beer, Devon - Preserved Machines on Public Display on Waymarking.com

Restored clock & mechanism in St Michael's church, Beer.

"This is believed to be the mechanism of the clock that was in the previous church building, which was demolished in 1875. It is an eight-day, quarter-striking clock regulated by a metre-long swinging pendulum. It has two winding barrels, one to power the clock and the other to power the quarterly chimes. The accuracy of its timekeeping is regulated by an anchor-type escapement, invented in about 1657 by Robert Hooke.

The escapement consists of an escape wheel with pointed, backward-slanting teeth and an anchor-shaped piece pivoted above it that rocks from side to side, linked to the pendulum. The anchor has slanted pallets on its arms that alternately catch on the teeth of the escape wheel, receiving impulses from it. Its mechanical operation has similarities to a verge escapement, and it has two of the verge's disadvantages: (1) the pendulum is constantly being pushed by an escape-wheel tooth throughout its cycle and is never allowed to swing freely, which disturbs its timekeeping, and (2) it is a recoil escapement where the anchor pushes the escape wheel backward during part of its cycle.

Such mechanisms were not particularly accurate and suffered from backlash, increased wear in the clock's gears and other things that caused them not to keep correct time. These problems were eliminated in the subsequent development of the deadbeat escapement, which slowly replaced the anchor escapement in precision clocks from the 17th century onwards.

The clock’s two barrels needed to be wound weekly by a single winding handle (which is now affixed to this display frame). Their fixed weights were raised to a height of about 9.5 metres above the ground inside the clock tower. The clock has a traditional seven-gear train, where the torque created by the hanging weights is reduced from the first gearwheel down to the seventh: in other words, the train converts few high-torque turns into many low-torque turns.

The present clock mechanism was made in about 1870 and was part of the £7,000 gift of the Hon. Mark Rolle to pay for the building of the present church. It has a deadbeat escapement and is normally accurate to within about 30-60 seconds per week."

SOURCE - info plaque

Type of Machine: Clock Year the machine was put on display: 1877 Year the machine was built: Not listed Is there online documentation for this machine: Not listed

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