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Ref: CK - 79 Longcase Clock

Clockmaker/By : John Baddeley of Tong (Shropshire).

Duration : 30 hour.

Circa : 1750.

Height : 76.5 inches.

Case :
Flat top oak case with original fretwork to hood.
Integral pillars to hood, quarter repeated to rear of hood.
Long trunk door.
Plinth to base.
Width at widest point 19" (hood)

Dial :
11" square brass dial with single hand and quarter hour markers on chapter ring.
Silvered chapter ring engraved 'Baddeley Tong'.
Cast brass spandrels depicting the seasons of Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter..
Roman numerals

Maker :
John Baddeley was a celebrated Shropshire clockmaker who took Thomas Ore, who also became a celebrated clockmaker, as his apprentice.

John Baddeley was the son of George Baddeley, a blacksmith turned clockmaker, and was baptised on 20 September 1727 at Tong. Married to Martha and had children :
     1752 Martha who married Robert Webster, clockmaker of Shifnal.
     1756 Anne who married Thomas Underhill of Albrighton.

John Baddeley made the clock in Tong church. It was working until 1984 and the mechanism is on display in the church. He became a member of the Royal Society and was reputedly a clockmaker to George lll. He studied mechanics and in 1762 began working on optics and constructed a reflective telescope.

His forge was behind The Bell public house in Tong where iron produced in Shifnal was worked into clock parts. John Baddeley moved from Tong to Albrighton circa 1766 where he died and was buried on 30 January 1804 and commemorated in a cast iron tomb probably made in Coalbrookdale, birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. Shaw's Staffordshire comments on him "His superiority as a clockmaker will be to told for some years to come by the numerous domestic and turret clocks substantially constructed by him in every part of the country within many miles of Albrighton where he long resided."

Guarantee : 12 months.