Museum in bid to buy Oliver Cromwell's watch

The watch's key has long-since vanished but "at more than 350 years old, it's quite fragile, so we wouldn't want to wind it", according to curator Stuart Orme

A museum which tells the story of Oliver Cromwell is hoping to acquire an "astonishingly small and beautiful" pocket watch believed to have been owned by the statesman.

The "Puritan-style", silver-cased timepiece was sold at auction in 2019 by a descendent of John Blackwell, one of Cromwell's officers.

Stuart Orme, curator of the Cromwell Museum in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, said it "has provenance, which is the key thing when trying to tie an object to notable people from history".

The museum needs to raise £9,500 to match funding in grants to add the watch to its collection. The only other surviving watch associated with the 17th Century parliamentarian is in the British Museum, London.

The 3cm (1.18in)-long timepiece came from watchmaker William Clay, whose premises were two doors down from Cromwell's King Street address in Westminster, London, in 1647

"It's remarkable the watch has been passed down through the generations for 350 years," said Mr Orme.

"It helps add to the provenance that it's said to have been gifted to Blackwell, but it was also made by a watchmaker who lived two doors down from Cromwell in London from 1647."

Blackwell's descendants believed he gave the watch to their ancestor while on campaign in 1650. The officer was Cromwell's military treasurer - and married to one of his cousins.

Blackwell was also prominent during the Civil War leader's rule as Lord Protector in the 1650s and, many decades later, became governor of Pennsylvania.

Cromwell would have worn the "astonishingly small and beautiful item" on a chain, tucking it into his waistcoat when not in use, said Mr Orme

The timepiece, with its delicately etched image of a hand with pointed finger, is "of a style known as a Puritan watch".

Mr Orme said: "Seventeenth Century watches were completely over the top, with pierced foliate on the outside, whereas this is quite small and, to our modern eye, it appears classically beautiful."

Puritans were Protestants who, like Cromwell, thought the Reformation of the Church of England had not gone far enough.

Such a watch was also quite an expensive status symbol for the parliamentarian, who was second-in-command by 1647 but "not quite as austere as people think".

It will be on display in the museum, which holds a huge collection of objects relating to Cromwell's life and times, until 10 November.