Peter
Birchall was born in 1799. It is thought
that his parents were William and Ellen, then living in Widnes. A record exists of the marriage of William
Birchall to Ellen Yates at Prescot in September 1789. There were multiple associations of the
Birchall name with watch and clock making in North West England in the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
According to Britten’s, George Birchall was a Warrington watchmaker, c.
1793-1820, and he may have been the junior partner in a firm, Birchall &
Son, 1770. Ed. Baillie, Ilbert and Clutton, Britten’s Old Clocks & Watches and their Makers, (London:
Bloomsbury Books) There was a
William born in 1749 who died in 1820, but his sons were named William and
Steven. Another ‘possible William,’ a
watchmaker of Wellington Street, St Lukes, died in 1842, but, again, a son
named Peter does not appear in his will.One of the sons, James, also a
watchmaker, committed suicide in February 1847 Holden’s Directory for 1802 lists a William
Birchall, watchmaker, at 11 Kirby Street, Hatton Garden. The location, Burton Crescent, a little to
the east of Clerkenwell, near St Pancras, is also associated with the Birchall
name in the 1820s.
There
is no record of an apprenticeship having been served by Peter, and it is likely
that he was trained by his father.
Whatever the facts of that, his horological ability was such that by
1840 he was confident enough to be submitting two of his chronometers to the
Greenwich Trials. Furthermore, one of
them, #281, was good enough to be placed seventh of twenty-eight, and thus his
work was out-performing that of such illustrious names as, Pennington,
Parkinson & Frodsham and Santiago French.
This chronometer also did better than two made by R & H Molyneaux. The latter business occupied premises at 30
Southampton Row, which, two years later, were taken over by Birchall and his
friend/partner, Henry Appleton. The 1841
Census shows Henry, then sixty three years old, living at 50, Myddleton Square
with Peter, Peter’s wife, Winnie, and their son John, just one year old. Appleton was renowned for the quality of his
work, making him a key employee for several years in the Molyneaux firm. Given this, and his twenty years seniority, he
may well have played the role of a mentor and greatly contributed to the
success achieved by Peter in the early Greenwich Trials which are summarised in
the table below:
Fig.1. Peter
Birchall’s Chronometers on Greenwich Trials
This
chronometer, #880 is c.1865:
Fig.2. Chronometer
#880 Courtesy of WorthPoint
Peter
had married Winnie Hitch in 1826. Their
son, William Peter, was born in 1838, and he too would eventually make
chronometers which would be proved excellent at Greenwich. The couple had another son, John, who also
worked in the family watchmaking business until his death in 1871. The family’s means enabled the employment of
a servant at each of the addresses recorded by successive censuses: 1851 – 6
Middle Brunswick Terrace; 1861 – 2 Amwell Terrace; 1871 and 1881 – 12a
Stonefield Street.Amwell Terrace was merged with Great Percy St in the
1860s and the Birchall’s house became number 65
Age
twenty three in 1861, William Peter was described in the Census as a ‘watch maker’s
finisher,’ (as was younger brother, John). At this stage he had already begun to make a
reputation of his own, having entered a chronometer - #1 – to the 1860
Greenwich Trial, and this was rated second only to the #642 of his father’s
manufacture. The following year his #9 was rated 7th. In 1862 he was elected to the Council of the
Horological Institute. As a further
indication of qualified status, his own listing began to appear in directories
in addition to those for his father.
William Peter’s Greenwich Trials results are summarised in the table
below:
Fig.3. William Peter
Birchall’s Chronometers on Greenwich Trials
William
Peter married Eliza King in April 1864.
They lived with Peter and John at Stonefield Street, the 1871 Census
recording them there together with their sons, Peter, Alfred and John. (Another son, Herbert, was born in
1873.) William Peter died, age forty, in
1878, from a subdural effusion of the brain, possibly a rare complication of
meningitis. His father, Peter, was
considerably longer-lived, dying in October 1885.
Considering
the success of both Peter’s and William Peter’s chronometers at the Greenwich
Trials, it is notable that they figure only marginally in horological
literature, and I have been unable to find any images of extant timepieces of
their manufacture other than that of Peter’s #880, as seen above. I would be very pleased to receive details of
any in readers’ possession and/or photographs of them.
