This is a reconstruction of the oldest purely mechanical clock for which accurate details are known. The original mechanism was designed and constructed for St. Albans Abbey, a town 25 miles north of London, by Richard of Wallingford, the Abbot of St. Alban’s Abbey, but it is no longer in existence. The sole surviving manuscript describing the details of this clock was discovered at the Bodleian Library in 1964 by Dr. John North, who has published detailed descriptions of the mechanism. This reconstruction was made in England, with the assistance of Dr. North, by Peter and lan Howard.

Double wheel verge and folio escapement, 24-hour time dial with 24-hour striking, and astrolabe-type dial indicating the positions of the sun, moon, and the stars, and the eclipses and phases of the moon, and the tide’s ebb and flow.

In addition to its use as an awe-inspiring depiction of God the Clockmaker bringing order to the heavens and earth, recent scholars surmise that its astronomical predictions and the tides helped determine times of planting and harvest and was also used as a means of bringing workers together at the local mills and managing the output of their work.

Historian John Leland saw the clock in the late 1530's when he made an inventory of the monasteries for King Henry VIII and expressed the opinion that it was “second to none in all Europe." This was the last recorded reference to the clock. It is assumed that It was destroyed by Henry VIII during his Protestant Reformation and subsequent dissolution of the monastery in 1539.

On display in the Early Clocks gallery, a part of the Clocks of the World exhibit.