Back when the boom was getting even more boomer during the Celtic Tiger years, Cheshire was a prime destination for shopping sprees at its designer outlets.
But those trips pale into insignificance when you think about the Cheshire shopping expedition undertaken by Colman Curran and David Boles in 2024. These two unassuming men spent a cool £1 million but their haul is far more intriguing and civic-minded than an endless parade of designer clothes.
To understand their shopping trip, you must know that these men have collected so many clocks and watches that they opened a museum to house them all and share them with the public. The Irish Museum of Time opened on Greyfriars Street in Waterford in 2021 and the serious horologists among us will know that it is the country’s only museum dedicated to clocks, watches and all such timely items.
When Curran heard that Cuckooland – a Cheshire museum of cuckoo clocks run by two brothers – was closing, the intrepid duo decided to go on a fact-finding mission, accompanied by the Waterford museum project manager Eamonn McEneaney and horologist Bertie McClure.
READ MORE
They ended up buying the contents of Cuckooland – more than 600 antique cuckoo clocks which mostly date from 1845 to 1920.
Shipping them back to Ireland almost drove them cuckoo, between Brexit, bureaucracy and the fragile nature of their cargo. But the cuckoos and their clocks arrived safely at their new nest and they will soon go on display in the museum.
[ Now’s the time in Waterford: ‘You won’t see as many clocks in one auction again’Opens in new window ]
“This is going to be the biggest public display of important and early Black Forest German cuckoo clocks in the world,” explains Curran who stresses that this is not some tourist tat you might pick up on holiday.
For hundreds of years, farmers in southwest Germany generated an income during the bleak midwinter by carving these distinctive timepieces with intricate mechanisms. They were mostly aimed at the export market, chiefly the US and the UK, which explains why Germany doesn’t have the biggest collection.
The museum will put more than 400 on display and, like any self-respecting cuckoo clock museum, they will also have a reserve team of cuckoo clocks ready to fly in if one of their fellow cuckoos should need some time out.
But of course they won’t all be cuckooing at the same time, because who has the time to wind 400 clocks? And imagine the cacophony. A sample of clocks will put the cuckoos to work while others will be set to show the cuckoos at various stages of their short journeys in and out of the clocks.
A century-old German fairground organ will also be playing to add to the atmosphere and the organisers believe it will be a big hit with children, as well as with serious collectors.
Boles says there are many mechanical marvels and timeless works of art in the collection but he singles out a rare cuckoo and echo clock, which has a singing cuckoo followed by a soft and soothing echo.
Between the purchase of the clocks, and the refurbishment of the building next door to house the new wing, the whole project cost €3.4 million but the beauty of it is that it was all funded by generous benefactors.
As well as co-founding the museum, Boles has spent more than two decades writing the ultimate guide to the world of Irish horology.
[ Irish watchmaker working in the home of horologyOpens in new window ]
He will launch Irish Clock and Watch Makers, a three-volume collection, when the exhibition opens to the public later this month. “Everything I ever learned about every Irish clockmaker will be in it,” he promises. “For example, one of the most notorious murderers in England was the son of an Irish clockmaker”.
Antrim-born doctor John Bodkin Adams was suspected to have killed hundreds of the wealthy patients who attended his Sussex practice. Adams was a beneficiary in more than 130 wills and was even left a Rolls-Royce in one will.
As his patients continued to die in alarmingly large numbers, the clock was ticking for the son of a clockmaker but he evaded justice. He was tried for one murder in 1957 and was acquitted.
Instead, he was convicted of minor offences relating to prescriptions and maintaining drug records. His father Samuel was spared the shame of his son being put on trial for murder as he died decades earlier.
That’s just one clock-related snippet in this bible of horology, and if you have time on your hands there are plenty more where that came from.
The cuckoo clock exhibition will open to the public when The Irish Museum of Time reopens on an auspicious day – March 29th – the date when the clocks go forward. Expect it to be all over TikTok.
