Museum of watchmakers in the library Guildhall (former city hall), – and the congregation itself for hours, made over the past four centuries, and the world's largest library devoted to horology.

Mechanical clocks were invented in Western Europe in the middle ages and was first installed in Church towers. In 1675, a Dutch engineer and physicist Christian Huygens patented a pocket watch. The first wrist watches were only for women. England held the primacy in watchmaking until the beginning of the twentieth century – here was important inventions dramatically increased the accuracy of time measurement. The Golden age of this industry in England occurred in the decades immediately after the Great fire of London in 1666.

Most of the exhibits of the Museum, which occupies only one room, created between 1600 and 1850: about 600 European (including English) clocks and 15 marine chronometers. The history of these extremely precise instruments are dramatic and exciting.

After the great geographical discoveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the era of long-distance voyages – Europe conquered new lands, Europe traded. In competing Maritime powers a chance to win had a country that learned to pinpoint the position of their ships in the ocean. In 1714 the British Parliament established a huge prize (20 thousand pounds sterling, about $ 5 million in current money) to someone who will find a way to accurately determine geographic longitude. The problem was solved carpenter, self-taught inventor John Harrison – he created not afraid of pitching the device working even with a higher accuracy than was required by Parliament. One of Harrison's chronometers, H5, put on display in the Museum is the jewel Assembly here.

The Museum's collection began to take shape in 1814, to the public it was discovered sixty years later. Its amazing rarities: for example, decimal hours, 1862 (the day is divided into ten hours, an hour for a hundred minutes, the arrows rotate in the opposite direction). On the stands exhibited many are decorated with extraordinary finesse desktop, handheld, wrist watches great masters.

The Museum belongs to the Worshipful company of watchmakers, the oldest professional Guild approved in 1631 king Charles I. the library of the Museum traces its lineage from the library of ancient manuscripts, founded the Company in 1813. For two centuries here added every conceivable publications about watchmaking, but the core of the collection are such rarities as a handwritten record of the inventor of the chronometer by John Harrison.