When we allowed a Steampunk ‘intervention’ into Flamsteed House and the Time and Longitude Gallery at the Royal Observatory Greenwich last year, in the exhibition Longitude Punk’d, reactions were varied. Many were really positive about bringing some imagination and artistry in to explore the themes, objects and spaces and we undoubtedly attracted at least a few visitors who might not otherwise have gone.
There were, however, more than a few staff and visitors who were annoyed that we were mixing fact and fiction and taking away the authoritative voice of the Museum. How would people learn anything? How would they know what was real history and which were the real objects? Either proving or entirely dismissing their point, most visitors, particularly tourists there for a photograph on the prime meridian, probably didn’t even realise that they were not seeing a straight forward exhibition.
What those who worried about ‘reality’ perhaps don’t fully appreciate is the extent to which fictions and fakes are always a part of museum displays. It is the joy of something like this exhibition – or the really wonderful Stranger than Fiction exhibition at the Science Museum – that they force you to think harder about what we’re presented with and how we too blindly trust the authority and ‘reality’ of certain modes of presentation.
For me, this photograph I took in the Royal Observatory’s Octagon Room during Longitude Punk’d nicely brings out some of what I mean.
While, even for the non-too eagle-eyed, it is clear that the dress in the centre, created for Longitude Punk’d, is not 18th century, for most visitors it might appear that this is a modern piece, with historical nods, simply dropped into a 17th-century space. It is a fiction dropped into history. But things are not what they seem.
Firstly, of course, we can note the museological trappings that make this space very different to the one that John Flamsteed knew. There are barriers, electric lights and museum labels, also a smooth, light wood floor. But what of those paintings? The instruments? The clocks and panelling?
A right old mix-up is the answer. Artfully arranged to evoke the 1676 engraving of the room by Francis Place:
![Prospectus intra Cameram Stellatam [View inside the Star Room] (Photo: National Maritime Museum)](https://teleskopos.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/octagon-room.jpg)
The astronomical quadrant, on the left, is a ‘real’ historic object, but some 75 years too late for this set-up. The telescope on the right (out of sight in my picture, but recreating the one in the engraving) is pure prop, without lenses. It used to offer those who bothered to take a look a view of a faded slide of Pluto (the cartoon dog). Now, after much effort of the sort that only those acquainted with the pace of change in large museums will appreciate, it has a picture of Saturn (the planet), fuzzed and chromatically distorted to give some sort of idea of what it was like looking through an early telescope. Obviously Saturn ain’t really visible, through the windows, in the daylight.
What of the paintings? Well, the rather splendid portrait of Charles II (left) is from 1670. I assume (correct me if I’m wrong – annoyingly the catalogue entry doesn’t give the provenance) that this has stayed at Greenwich, if not this room, throughout the centuries – it is certainly similar to the one in the engraving. However, for the purposes of this post we should note that it is nevertheless “thought to be a copy of a Lely”.
The engraving also shows us a painting of the Duke of York, later James II, who had been, perhaps significantly, Lord High Admiral until 1673. However, the one that is currently there is in fact a commissioned replica from 1984. I have no idea what happened to the (copy?) Lely of James that was originally there. Did Charles survive and not James because of an anti-Catholic Astronomer Royal (nearly all of them, I reckon, before the 20th century)? Answers below, please.
The clocks, originally by Thomas Tompion, are perhaps the most complex story of all. Again, what’s in the two images appears to match but that’s about where it stops. Famously, after Flamsteed’s death his wife Margaret sold off the books and instruments at the Observatory, fairly seeing them as private property since they had either been bought by or gifted to Flamsteed. The clocks, therefore, left the observatory.
Today, one of the clocks is back, but on the other side of the room. That is because it was altered and its original 13-foot pendulum changed so that it could be turned into a longcase clock. The clock, with the original dial fitted into an 18th-century wooden case and its mechanism on display in a late 20th-century glass case, is a completely different beast. Next to it is a (wonderful) interloper: a Tompion longcase, which only moved to the Observatory in 2010.
What you can see in the top picture is two replica dials (although the one on the far right is a replica of a sideral clock that, although it was included in the Place drawing, seems never to have actually been installed at the Observatory: a replica of a fiction, therefore) and a reconstruction. The reconstruction, a “tribute” to Tompion by a horology student at West Dean College, has a transparent dial so that the extraordinary pendulum, with a backwards-and-forwards rather than side-to-side motion, can be admired. Excitingly, though, for seekers of ‘reality’, the clock’s positioning was “made possible as many of the original holes for the mount fittings are still visible.”
There we have it. The most original thing in the room are some holes behind the skirting.
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Oh, I forgot to mention the table with the carpet (rather than a table cloth) on top, plus chairs around (out of sight in my photo). Pure set design, obviously. Plus the windows were better-looking replacements for 19th-century plate glass ones. I could go on…
Funnily enough, I have just been interviewed about the business of using replica clocks in the Octagon room and seeing this prompted me to add a few points to your blog.
The ‘wonderful interloper’ came to the Museum in 1986 and has been in the Time and Society gallery since 2006, never in the Octagon room. The clock that is currently in the Octagon room is the extraordinary angle clock, which was made by Tompion according to John Flamsteed’s design that tells time in terms of degrees of Earth rotation, instead of hours, minutes and seconds. This almost unique clock (there is another of later construction displayed elsewhere at the Observatory) is a useful document to illustrate and aid understanding of the relationship between the astronomer and the instrument maker.
As to the business of using replica clocks in this space, it was not an easy decision to add another. There has been a replica mechanical movement behind the panelling since the Museum took over the Observatory. This clock was installed before research revealed that the Greenwich year clocks were fitted with Richard Townley’s escapement design (later modified by Tompion), which featured a front-to-back motion of the pendulums (the bow-fronted windows above the clock dials suddenly made sense).
The conversion of the first replica to the Townley/Tompion escapement and the provision of the second replica clock by Westdean College enabled us to experiment with clocks in this space – something that was never an option with the originals (the other being at the British Museum). Our experience with the replica clocks is very similar to that of John Flamsteed in his early years as Astronomer Royal. The space behind the panelling is far from ideal for housing clockwork as it encourages substantial draughts up and down the space, carrying dust that quickly builds up and clogs the movements.
The ATG’s use of ‘tribute’ is not appropriate for these clocks, they provide us with real data on the design capabilities and the effect of their environment. The glass dial only serves to show that we have something substantial and mechanical driving the hands (occasionally) as opposed to the re-purposed electrical slave units that the replica replaces.
I have never encountered any reference that says the mysterious third dial to the right of the door frame was a sidereal clock, or otherwise and would be very pleased to hear if you have found one. There is ample physical evidence in the woodwork behind the panelling to conclude that there was indeed a clock in the space and that it had a regular side-to-side pendulum action.
Many thanks for the corrections and additions – I was doing some of this by memory, and by trying to find things on Collections Online, where I couldn’t find the Tompion angle clock. Have you got a link? On the third clock I think I read this in Derek Howse’s edition of the Francis Place engravings – does the original engraving state sidereal, or just “third clock” for label C? Howse may have changed his mind later: his Vol III of Greenwich Observatory says the “very existence” of the third clock “is sometimes doubted” but then suggests one by Towneley/Tompion “could have been this one”. Sounds like further research has confirmed this.
I should add, on the question of “tributes”, “history” and “real data”, that this of course raises many similar issues about “authenticity” to those rather lightly addressed here. They come out fascinatingly over the whole question of the Burgess B clock and “vindicating Harrison“.
Here is the angle, or sidereal degree clock Rory mentions above (and which I really should have got right the first time!).
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