.

Long-Case Clock by Joshua Rudd

Made in Bradford on Avon

Bradford on Avon Museum, Wiltshire

.

IMG_1897Joshua Rudd clock, Bradford on Avon Museum

      A 30-hour long-case clock that was made in Bradford on Avon by Joshua Rudd in the 1750s or 1760s, in an oak case that may have been made a little later in the 18th century. It has a brass face, decorated with decidedly naïve engravings of sun, moon, flowers and birds. In the spandrels (corners) are cast cherubs, or perhaps representations of the four quarters or winds. It shows the hours, minutes and the day of the month.

There seems to have been a whole family of clock and watch makers called Rudd. Joshua Rudd was apprenticed in Bishop Auckland, Co Durham and gained a Settlement Certificate in Bradford on Avon in 1734. He and his wife Rose had six children who were christened at Holy Trinity parish church between 1737 and 1752; he died in 1780.

There is a long case clock in The Hall which he made in 1769 and other clocks by him are known. His eldest son, Edward was born in 1742 and was working as a clockmaker in Melksham from at least 1766 and died in 1786. Joshua jr. was the fourth child and was probably born around 1745 and, if he made clocks in Bradford, would have finished his apprenticeship in about 1766. Another Rudd, Tillum Rudd, was working in Warminster in the 1760s.

The Museum’s clock was in a house on the hillside above the River Wye, north of Tintern and had been inherited from Katharine MacKean, who once ran the “China Hen” antique shop in Woolley Street with Elizabeth Stephenson. The pair are revered today as leading lights in the formation of the Bradford on Avon Preservation Trust and the “Hens Orchard” next to the Tithe Barn at Barton Farm is named in their memory.

 

clock made by Joshua Rudd, Bradford on AvonThe face of another clock by Joshua Rudd. There is one with a similar face in a mahogany case in The Hall in Bradford on Avon; that one is inscribed Richard Milsum [Milsom] and Ann Rawlings, who married on 24th October 1769.

.

.

.

Joshua Rudd clock, Bradford on AvonThe face of a further clock by Joshua Rudd. Yet another has the number 120 on its face, so there must be many Rudd clocks out there.