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ENGLISH LEVER WATCH Thomas Inskip, Shefford, 1834

English silver watch by Thomas Inskip, Shefford, Bucks., hallmarked London 1834.   Gilt brass full-plate lever movement with gold balance-wheel, jewels to the third wheel and diamond end-stone.   Off-white enamel dial with roman chapter-ring and large subsidiary seconds dial.   Gold hands (the hour and minute hands in the ‘Breguet’ or ‘moon’ pattern).   Diameter 52mm.   Chain is much later.

Movement of the Inskip watch (with dust-cap removed) showing the gold balance-wheel, the regulator pointer mounted on the cock-table (a fairly unusual feature at this time) and the toothed rim of the fusee-cone which meshes with the centre pinion.   The outer end of the balance-spring is anchored by a tapered pin to a polished steel bracket screwed to the bottom plate.

An early example of the classic 19th-century English full-plate lever watch.   Watches almost indistinguishable from this were still being made seventy years later;  the only changes were that the seconds dial shrank somewhat and was generally countersunk from about 1860, while the balance-wheel was also reduced in size and acquired bimetallic compensation in the 1890s.