Rare English Dial Clock Worth Thousands | BBC Antiques Roadshow UK

What we've got here is basically, if you can imagine it without the little drop dial, is what we call drum head construction. Most English dials of this period have the cast bezel and then a moulded mahogany case which is basically set a little bit back. This however is straight sided, if I can use that expression, and obviously you've got these lovely fish scale grills on the side to let out the sound of the bell. Now I'm going to take it off, heavy though it is, and let's just look at one or two features. Have you any thoughts on date while I'm doing this? Well not really, um 18th century perhaps? No a little bit later than that, I think we could say late 1820s to early 1830s and always the sign of a fabulous clock is a lovely lovely pendulum. Superb heavy bob cased in brass and a solid steel rod that fits into this fantastic brass pendulum crutch here. Now the movement has shaped shoulders to the plates and the pendulum is hanging from this large section up here as opposed to something that would have just popped out of the top plate, so the quality is there immediately and you probably haven't noticed but under there you can just see the two chain fuses. This is the equivalent of a constant speed drive so have you got it on good time at home or not? Very good time. Roughly what does it do? It loses about a minute in eight days. That's very good, you'll be able to get it even better because this is absolutely top of the range. I really can't tell you much about the maker Mr Ashley of London. There are various Ashleys who were working around that time. I'm really glad you have it working at home. I'm going to pop it back up and let's just hear the strike. It's just past three and nothing's going to happen. Isn't that typical? Let's take it to four and see if anything happens there. So there we are a lovely lovely strike. Is it something we had in the family for years or not? My father-in-law bought it about 40 years ago. So sort of 1960s? For home use? No, he had it in his office and when he retired he actually forgot it and it was some time later in a year or two that a colleague realised what had happened and actually returned it to him. What luck! So he didn't find the fact it was striking every hour upsetting at work? Obviously not. Well I'm really glad you've got it back from the office. It would have been a sin to have left it there. It is very rare and there are lots of dial collectors in this country who would pay a lot of money for this. Its price at auction realistically at the moment is in the region of £3,000. Right. It's a great object. Yes. So well rescued. Yes, absolutely. Thank you.