[4][5] From 1815, the collection had expanded from books to include horological exhibits, among which an early acquisition was a set of pallets from an escapement by Alexander Cumming, bought by Vulliamy at auction, and which are still on display, on the Gillows bookcase.

[3] With the deaths of BL Vulliamy and George Atkins, Clerk to the Company, in the 1850s, the collection lost its key advocates and supporters, but the fortunes of the museum were reversed with the construction of a new building for Guildhall Library in the early 1870s.

[7] In 1891, The Rev Harry Leonard Nelthropp, a key supporter of the museum, persuaded the Company to acquire one of the most important items in the modern collection, John Harrison’s fifth marine timekeeper, H5.

Jagger was succeeded as Keeper by Sir George White in 1988, who served for thirty years through to 2018, in which time the museum and archive collection was again expanded.

[14] The major acquisitions in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century were the Hurle-Bath and Hurle-Bradley watch collections, and the purchase of a significant cache of original John Harrison manuscript documents.

The gallery moves forward in time as it progresses westwards through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and is completed at the west end by recent and current objects, such as watches made by and other items associated with George Daniels, a former Master of the Company, and an explanation of the wristwatch now being manufactured by Charles Frodsham in Sussex.

The chronological story set out in the gallery in information panels and labelling has been resolved into a single narrative account, The Clockmakers of London, by the Keeper Emeritus, George White, first published in 2000 and since revised in a new edition with high-resolution images (2018).

[17] Highlights include: In 2019 the museum acquired a large portrait (970mm x 800mm) in a silvered frame, showing a well-dressed gentleman holding a fine and complicated watch, dated perhaps to the 1670s.