ANTIQUE CLOCKS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 3, Issue 206, 30 August 1940, Page 2

ANTIQUE CLOCKS

VALUABLE HEIRLOOM GIVEN TO PATRIOTIC COUNCIL AN INTERESTING HISTORY There is a long and strange history attached to an antique clock which has been donated to the Auck land Provincial Patriotic Council by four sisters, who do not wish to disclose their identity. The clock is of Greek design, represents the entrance to the temple of Jupiter, and is wreathed with sprays of gold laurel. The pendulum consists of the sacred geese which were offered up by the priests. In a letter which the council has received one of the sisters states: "We can date it back in our family to 1793. and as an antiaue the clockhas been valued at £100. I have in my possession the picture of the Georgian rectory of Cheedle, Ghiswick, the home of Mr T. Cripps in 1793, where ihe clock stood in the drawing room. Lord Kitchener's father/ Colonel Kitchener, visited at this house, and married a daughter of Mr Cripps. Another daughter married Major Hawker, of the 12th Dragoons. She was my great grandmother, to whom the clock descended. The clock later was left to a daughter of Major Hawker, who mar ried Captain Digby Dent, R.N., who,, when a young man, carried the dispatch to Napoleon that told him that he had to go to the island of St. Helena. The incident is depicted in the play, 'The Royal Divorce.' Napo-' leon was playing cards with the captain of the Bellerophon when my grandfather, then a cadet, carried the dispatch to the captain, and said: "This dispatch has come, aboard sir." The captain read the dispatch, turned to Napoleon, and said: 'I have orders to sail for Sit Helena.'