The Wells Clock (Wells Cathedral)

The Wells Clock. By R. P. Howgrave; ed, L. S. Colchester. Wells, UK: The Friends of Wells Cathedral, 1978. 5th edn. rpt. 1987.

The famous clock of Wells Cathedral was finished by 1400 and bears an inscription identical to one associated with "certain decorations on a pavement laid down in front of the High Altar at Westminister in the time of Abbot Ware A.D. 126 [. . .]: Sphericus archetypum globus hic monstrat macrocosmum. This inscription surrounded a representation of the Ptolemaic Universe and the translation of it makes plain good sense: 'This rounded globe represents the Macrocosm (great Universe)[,] its archetype'" (11-12). On the Wells clock, this inscription is around the plate showing the phases of the moon and on a dial face showing not only the twenty-four hours of the day but "the Earth at the centre surrounded by the spheres of air (and fire?), the Moon revolving round it in strict accordance with the Ptolemaic conceptions of her diurnal and proper motions, the sun making his journey round the earth once in 24 hours, the starry firmament outside these and the four cardinal winds in their traditional places at the corners. The Wells clock, then, is not a mere clock: it is essentially a model illustrating fundamental mediaeval conceptions of creation and the universe" (5). By 1400, then, it was possible to have in a Christian Cathedral a clock that was also a kind of orrery, using a mechanism to image in little the universe: by implication, a kind of clockwork universe.