Gaydon & Sons, a Victorian turret clock: the eight-day duration movement having cast-iron plates, maintaining power and a dead-beat escapement, the wood-rod pendulum having a large brass bob with a knurled knob timekeeping adjustment, with a brass dial for adjusting the time engraved with the name Gaydon & Sons, with various pulleys, height 43cms.* Biography The Gaydon family were well-known jewellers and watchmakers in both North Devon and London. John Gaydon, born 1821, ran the High Street premises in Barnstaple, whilst a number of others worked in Brentford, Middlesex with twenty-six members of the Gaydon family recorded as watch and clockmakers. They were Watchmakers to the Queen (Victoria) and Watchmakers to the Admiralty, with Henry Martin Gaydon of Middlesex becoming Master of the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers in 1925. He was a partner in the well-known firm of Birch & Gaydon Ltd, goldsmiths & silversmiths of Fenchurch Street, London.* Notes The Barnstaple business supplied many local churches and public buildings with turret clocks, including one for the Barnstaple police station and another for the Globe Hotel which had double dials, one for the lounge bar and the other for the smoking room. The church clock at Swimbridge is inscribed as being presented and erected by the Gaydon brothers, John his brothers from Middlesex, in commemoration of the restoration of the church in 1880, as natives of Swimbridge.