Wednesday 6th August 2025, 14:07
As usual I'm posting in more or less reverse chronological order.
Before the café I visited the local museum. It's very small but no less interesting for that.
Had a long chat with one of the volunteers which started as a question about one of the items, veered into how mechanical engineering is so much more photogenic than electronics and software and ended with a long discussion about electric cars.
They had several mangles on display with the makers name and Market Drayton cast into the frame. At least that's what I thought but my guide said that they had recently discovered that they were an early example of outsourcing and that they were in fact made in Newcastle by a completely unrelated foundry!
Only took one picture in the museum. It was of a clock, or at least a clockwork mechanism,that was not running.
The face is marked in 60 divisions in anticlockwise order. There is only one hand but I'm not sure if that is simply because another is missing. It was difficult to really get close enough to examine it closely. I asked what it was but my guide knew no more about it than I did and when she asked the other volunteers they had no idea either. She did remark that it took ages to run down so they didn't let run. The more I repeat that the stranger it sounds.
I said to my guide that I thought it was a shame that most clocks in most museums and galleries aren't running. She countered with a remark that not everyone likes the noise they make and I argued that in a typical exhibition space they would be inaudible. When I visited the Jagellonian University in Krakow some years ago all of the clocks were running and telling the right time. When I mentioned to the guide there that this was unusual he looked at me in astonishment.
https://draytoncivicsociety.co.uk/market-drayton-museum/
Edit: The Newcastle mentioned here by the museum guide is presumably the nearby Newcastle-under-Lyme rather than much more distant Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
