Keeping Time in the Georgian House

With Dr. John C Taylor OBE

Revolutionary advances in timekeeping during the Georgian Age gave to the world new ways to calculate, co-ordinate and measure time. An affluent social elite, moving between parties and events at the theatre, racecourse and assembly rooms, demanded accurate timekeeping to regulate their activities, making the ownership of a clock or watch not just a luxury commodity and symbol of status, but also a necessity.

In this special guest lecture for Fairfax House (as part of the 2016 Festival of Ideas: ‘Tick Tock’) Dr John C Taylor OBE, one of the world’s most renowned inventors and foremost horologists, will explore the keeping of time in the Georgian House, and looking specifically within Fairfax House suggest what clocks the Fairfax family might have owned, or were acquired by the Ninth Viscount, Charles Gregory Fairfax, to furnish his daughter’s newly remodelled and fashionable townhouse on Castlegate.

Dr John C Taylor OBE FREng is one of the world’s most prolific inventors.  His bi-metal thermostat controls in the humble kettle are used throughout the world over one billion times a day.  Dr Taylor is also the leading expert on the work of John Harrison, an early pioneer of timekeeping and sea clocks.  This led him to design and help build the Corpus Chronophage, a three metre-high clock that is displayed in an exterior wall of Corpus Christi College building at Cambridge University. His company won four Queen’s Awards for Export and Innovation. Dr Taylor is no stranger to Fairfax House and has lent his wooden Harrison precision longcase clock to the exhibition: ‘Keeping Time’ in 2013.

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