About
The Museum of Timekeeping occupies Upton Hall, a handsome Regency country house in the Nottinghamshire village of Upton, a few miles east of Newark-on-Trent. The hall has been the headquarters of the British Horological Institute since 1972, and the museum grew out of the Institute's own collection, assembled since its foundation in 1858 as the professional body for British clock and watchmakers. That origin gives the museum an unusual character: it was built by practitioners rather than by collectors, and it is as interested in how timekeeping instruments were made, repaired and taught as in how they look.
The collection runs from monumental turret clocks that once drove church and public dials, through longcase and bracket clocks, marine chronometers, precision regulators and pocket watches, to the tools, lathes, gauges and workshop equipment of the trade. Sundials, water clocks and early timekeepers set the mechanical era in a much longer context, and the Institute's library and archive, held in the same building, form one of the most important horological research collections in the country.
Its best-known single object is the original speaking clock — the machinery that from 1936 answered the telephone with the time, in the voice of Ethel Cain, a London telephonist chosen by public competition and known for decades as the girl with the golden voice. Generations of British households set their clocks by that recording, and the equipment that delivered it survives here.
Visitors should note the opening pattern carefully. The museum admits general visitors on Fridays only, from around 10:30 to 15:30, during a spring and summer season, and closes for the winter; group and private tours are arranged by appointment throughout the year. Parking on site is free, the house and its grounds are pleasant in their own right, and the specialist nature of the collection means the volunteers and horologists on duty are generally willing to explain mechanisms in as much detail as a visitor cares to hear.
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Plan Your Visit
⏱️ Recommended Visit Duration
💡 Visitor Tips
- Check the day before you travel — general admission is on Fridays only, and only during the spring and summer season.
- The museum closes over the winter and reopens for the 2026 season on 29 March; outside the season the only way in is a pre-booked private or group tour.
- Last entry is 14:45 for a 15:30 close, so a morning arrival gives a much better visit.
- Ask questions — the people on duty are horologists and volunteers from the British Horological Institute, and the collection rewards being explained rather than simply looked at.
- Parking on site is free, which is worth knowing given how rural the location is and how limited the bus service to Upton is.
- Look for the original speaking clock apparatus specifically; visitors who do not know it is here often walk past the most famous object in the building.
- Combine the visit with Southwell, five kilometres away, whose Minster and National Trust Workhouse make an easy pairing on the same day.
- Researchers wanting the Institute's library and archive should contact the museum well in advance rather than turning up on a Friday.
Highlights
The Original Speaking Clock
From 1936 British telephone subscribers could dial TIM and hear the time announced by Ethel Cain, a London telephonist chosen by public competition and known ever afterwards as the girl with the golden voice. The machinery that delivered that service — glass discs carrying optically recorded speech, driven in precise synchronisation — survives in this museum.
For several generations it was the authority against which households set their clocks, and it represents the moment when accurate time stopped being something you owned an instrument to determine and became something you could simply be told over a wire.
A Collection Assembled by Practitioners
The museum grew from the collection of the British Horological Institute, founded in 1858 as the professional body for the trade, and that origin shapes everything about it.
Objects were kept because they mattered to clockmakers and watchmakers — as examples of technique, as teaching material, as records of what the trade could do — rather than because they were decorative or valuable. The result is a collection unusually strong in tools, workshop equipment, half-finished movements and instructional material, and unusually willing to explain how a thing was made rather than only who owned it.
Turret Clocks
The largest objects in the collection are turret clocks, the heavy iron movements that once sat in church towers and public buildings driving external dials and striking the hours over a whole town. Removed as churches electrified or closed, they are difficult to display and easily scrapped, which makes a serious collection of them unusual.
Seeing the mechanisms at ground level, out of the towers they were built into and with their trains exposed, gives a far better understanding of how public time was kept before wireless and telephone than any smaller clock can offer.
Precision Regulators and Marine Chronometers
Precision timekeeping was for two centuries the sharpest edge of British engineering, driven by the problem of finding longitude at sea and by the needs of observatories and railways. The collection covers regulators built to keep time to a fraction of a second a day, marine chronometers made to hold accuracy through months of ocean motion and changing temperature, and the escapements, compensating balances and suspension systems developed to achieve it.
These are objects where the interest is entirely internal, and the museum displays them so that mechanism rather than case is what a visitor actually looks at.
Collections
The Museum of Timekeeping holds the collection of the British Horological Institute, founded in 1858, at the Institute's headquarters at Upton Hall near Newark. Holdings run from turret clocks that once drove church and public dials, through longcase, bracket and carriage clocks, precision regulators, marine chronometers and pocket watches, to the lathes, wheel-cutting engines, gauges and workshop equipment of the trade.
Sundials, water clocks and sandglasses cover timekeeping before the mechanical era.
The best-known single object is the original speaking clock apparatus of 1936, which announced the time to British telephone subscribers in the voice of Ethel Cain. The Institute's library and archive, one of the most important horological research collections in the country, is held in the same building.
The Speaking Clock
The original 1936 telephone speaking clock apparatus and the story of Ethel Cain's recorded voice.
Turret Clocks
Public clock movements removed from church towers and civic buildings, displayed at ground level with their trains exposed.
Precision Timekeeping
Regulators, marine chronometers and the escapements and compensations developed to keep time at sea and in observatories.
Tools and Workshops
Lathes, wheel-cutting engines, gauges and benches of the clock and watchmaking trade.
Themes
Time Periods
Current Exhibitions
No current exhibitions. Please check the museum website for updates.