# Pocket watch mystery



## Nicholas (Sep 10, 2016)

Hi good people,

i have a lovely, well worn pocket watch that I inherited from my Father many years ago, it was his fathers before him, and I daresay his fathers fatgs before that. I have used it on and off for a long time, vascillating between wantng it to be functional, and fearing loss or serious damage to such an old watch.

Anyway I was idling yesterday, and happened to have the watch out, as I am going to a charity event soon and wish to wear the watch, and i decided to decipher the hallmarks. Therein lies the mystery.

there are 5 marks.

Country mark: England

Town mark: Chester

Date Mark: 1727

makers mark: TPH ( possibly Thomas Peter Hewitt)

and underneath all that, a capital 'A'

The watch is a stem wound pin set

so you can see why i say mystery, the stem wound was invented around 1850' and TPH (in a shield) was registered in 1899

so the 1727 date stamp cannot be correct, and yet it is a clear match for that date in the chester date charts. A florid B in a square shield with clipped corners.

Can anyone shed some light on this, and what the capital A might represent?


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## Seismic one (Jun 21, 2008)

Photo will help grearly.


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## Always"watching" (Sep 21, 2013)

My dear Nicholas, I thought this was going to be a really tricky one, and like Seismic one, I assumed that the question could only be approached by means of accompanying pictures. However, by dint of extraordinary good fortune, and of course a bit of canny research, I have the answer you require.

On 13 August 2014, a certain "Kamorek" posted a question on the silver forum, www.925-1000.com, that was uncannily like your own, and fortunately someone was at hand to answer it. The letter B on a shield with straight lines means 1727, but a date letter B on a French-type shield is for 1902, and it seems that Kamorek's and your own watch cases both date to 1902. The casemaker in question, whose mark appears on both watch cases, was Thomas Peter Hewitt (The Lancashire Watch Co.Ltd.) Prescot, Lancashire, and the mark you describe was registered by him on 17 May 1899.

You are actually rather lucky to have a watch by the Lancashire Watch Company because there is now an abundance of material on this firm and its products in the form of a new book on the subject. If you look up the company online, you will find a useful entry in Wikipedia, and I can say that your watch was made before 1910, because the Lancashire watch company failed in that year.

I do hope I have been of help and I trust you will wear your watch with pride.


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## Nicholas (Sep 10, 2016)

I Thank you both for your replys. I will have to work out how to plant a picture on the web for linking to here, as I also suspected 1902 to be a much more likely year of manufacture. However, while the 1727 and 1902 font of the letter B are the same, the shield is distinctly different, and my stamp is clearly not the shield of 1902 but is that of 1727.

right, photos to come.


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