William
Eardley Cribb was a maker of watches, chronometers and clocks of above-average
quality. His good reputation was
especially justified by the excellent performance of his chronometers – such
that, according to Mercer, he became a supplier to the Admiralty. His was a business which could have grown and
continued through successive generations, but, having had no children, it
ceased with his death at the relatively early age of sixty*.
William
had been born in London on Christmas Eve, 1814, and grew up at 58 Theobalds
Road, Bloomsbury, between Chancery Lane and Russell Square. From the early 1820s he lived and traded from
premises on Southampton Row, successively at numbers 17, 30 and 146 – the
latter nowadays being an Indian Restaurant.
Around
1853-55 Cribb developed his business by taking over that of Birchall &
Appleton at 30 Southampton Row following Appleton’s death in September
1852. The partners had consolidated their own
good standing by acquiring in 1830 the business/premises of Robert Molyneux
& Son – Molyneux having been especially notable for his work on auxiliary
compensation for marine chronometers, as discussed in my article on James Eiffe.
The
British Museum holds two examples of Cribb’s work. One of these, with movement number 3715,
circa-1860, features an escapement of the type known as Cole's Resilient – invented in 1830 by James Ferguson Cole. This obviates the banking pins normally used
to constrain movement of the lever by the utilisation of specific shaping of
the escape wheel teeth and angularity of the pallets.
© Trustees of the
British Museum
This
is another of Cribb’s movements, number 3824, which is a free sprung
chronometer, the quality of which appears first rate in this photograph, for
which thanks are due to ‘radger’ who posts on the Watchuseek forum:
