Of the 12 cities listed, included are Port Natal, Sidney (sic), Madras, New York, Sevastopol, Calcutta, St Petersburg and Paris. It also strikes the quarter hours on eight bells driven by a triple fusee movement.
Its Long Street Salerooms appearance on December 10 is thought to be the first time that the 2ft 3 1/2in (70cm) high clock had been on the open market since it was presented to an ancestor of the vendors nearly 150 years ago.
With a bank of telephone bidders, five-figure commission bids from collectors in the South West and the US, bidding rose quickly to £20,000 and then stopped at £21,000, when the clock went to a UK dealer on the telephone.
Unique... on the face of it
“In 20 years I have never seen anything quite like it,” says auctioneer Richard Bromell of Sherborne’s Charterhouse. “It has a central dial for Greenwich which is surrounded by 11 smaller dials telling the time in the various countries. Having originally been presented to a Victorian relative [of the vendors] who built railways for a living, he would have been able to keep track of time with all his business interests.”