John Sanderson and 'The Wigton School of Clockmaking'
' The Wigton School of Clockmaking '- (as it has become known), was founded by John Sanderson who was a most interesting early Northern clockmaker. He was born at the Quaker settlement of Tiffinthwaite near Wigton in 1671,and was the son of a blacksmith. He was left fatherless from the age of 12, and is believed to have been apprenticed under Quaker Clockmaker John Ogden at Bowbridge in Yorkshire, though Sanderson was not at this time a Quaker himself. However I must point out that at the moment there is no evidence that John Sanderson was actually apprenticed to John Ogden and my assumption is based on the information i have gleaned from reference books and my own private research. For involved family reasons he cut that apprenticeship short to return to Tiffinthwaite and set up on his own account, as he needed to start to earn money. This he had already done by at least 1691.He worked initially at Tiffinthwaite, though he signed his clocks as at Wigton, probably because nobody more than a dozen miles distant would have heard of Tiffinthwaite. He married a girl from a local Quaker family, though she died only two years later, and he became a Quaker himself for many years after that. He worked at Wigton and nearby, having married twice more, untill his death which was probably in 1754 or shortly after, though his burial record has never been found.His 30-hour clocks often have a religous verse engraved in the dial centre, and this is usually: 'Remember man, That die thou must, And after that, To judgement just'. Some of his clocks also warn ' memento mori' ('bear death in mind' ). Other verses are known but all in the same vein. The school was made up of three main makers , which were John Sanderson, John Ismay and Richard Sill. Early clocks by all three makers all have very similar features and have all come out of the same workshop. Another interesting maker who seems to have joined the ' school ' from around 1718 was James Hendrie who became a prolific Wigton maker, and died in 1768
John Ismay who is John Sandersons step-brother (sharing the same father), was born in 1699, and was apprenticed to John Ogden in 1711.He Died in 1755. Richard Sill was working at Wigton by 1704, when he married a local girl. Not a lot is known on this maker but he died at Wigton in 1729.
The question arises with Sandersons early 30-hour clocks as to whether they were intended to be housed in long cases. His eight-day clocks are no problem in this respect, as many examples are still found in their original cases. However, his numerous and early thirty-hour clocks with lantern type brass movements have nearly all been housed in a case at a later date (apart from a few original examples), or still have no case today and sit instead on a wall shelf or bracket. It seems likely that Sandersons clocks were the Cumbrian equivalent of Walter Archers Gloucestershire hook-and-spike clocks. Sandersons thirty-hour clocks were probably bought to just sit on a simple wall bracket originally. This would make the clock much cheaper than a cased example and the new owners would then have a choice to have the clock cased at a later date when they had more money. Why would Sanderson have gone to the vastly time-consuming trouble of casting decoratively-shaped pillars, and often feet too, if they were to be housed unseen inside a longcase? For such a purpose he could have used much cheaper iron rod. His later conventional birdcage movements with square (flat) pillars were almost certainly made to be housed in a long case.
Brian Loomes is the authority on John Sanderson, and his book 'Brass Dial Clocks' has a whole chapter on The Wigton School. This book is a must for collectors interested in this subject. Most of the above information was taken from the book , along with an article written for Clocks Magazine of April 2006, also by Brian Loomes
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