The Dover is one of the few surviving clocks from this era that still has its original foliot, a primitive balance wheel which was the timekeeper used in the earliest clocks, consisting of a bar with weights hanging from the ends, which rotates back and forth.
In the 19th century this misled scholars into thinking the clock may have been made as early as 1348.
The clock is similar to one in the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford that came from St Laurence's parish church in Combe, Oxfordshire.
In 1938 Donald Harden, then Keeper of Antiquities at the Ashmolean Museum, reported "They are identical in design, workmanship and method of construction, even down to the peculiar and rather puzzling cranking of the arm for carrying the lever that lifted the hammer".
The only difference he found was that the Dover clock is slightly smaller.