The Edinburgh Reporter January 2022

20 FEATURE CAPITAL COLLECTIONS
Clock watching is
just capital
The famous Balmoral Clock one of the many city
clocks maintained by James Ritchie & Son
A
recently added exhibition on
Capital Collections, the image
library for Edinburgh is quite
unique, and offers insight into
one of the best known family
businesses in the city.
It is a family photo album loaned to the
library for digitisation by David Ritchie Watt
who is a descendant of clockmaker, James
Ritchie. The Ritchie family was a significant one
who put their mark on all areas of the city from
swimming pools to parks and landmarks.
Visitors and residents alike are familiar with
the clock on the Balmoral Hotel and the floral
clock in Princes Street Gardens. Some of you
might be familiar with the clocks where you live,
say in Morningside or Tollcross. All these clocks
have one thing in common, they were all made
by clockmakers, James Ritchie & Son.
James Ritchie was born c1780 and although
Clockmakers James Ritchie has
been keeping time in Edinburgh for
more than two hundred years
and is one of the city’s
oldest businesses
he was not born in Edinburgh, he started his
career in watchmaking around 1799 when he
was apprenticed to James Howden who had a
successful business at 3 Hunter Square. He
started his own business at 29 Leith Street in
1809 and in 1819 took over the business of
Joseph Durnward at 2 Leith Street, who had
qualified in his trade in 1775. And so began
the start of the Ritchie firm.
James Ritchie was admitted as a Burgess of
Edinburgh on 18 April 1814, as his wife Sarah
who he had married in 1804 was a native of
Edinburgh. By 1838, the business had moved
to 25 Leith Street occupying the shop at
ground level and three basement flats which
were used as the workshops for over 100 years.
In 1839 at the age of 11, his son Frederick was
admitted as a partner and all their clocks were
inscribed James Ritchie & Son.
The mechanical side of clockmaking gave way
to the increasing use of electricity and the
Ritchies were leaders in this new field. Alex Bain
who invented the first electric clock and
Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the
telephone, were among the Ritchies’ friends.
Before Bell went to America, he fitted a
The company
flourished under
Frederick’s
leadership and it
gained worldwide
reputation
communication system up in the family home
allowing Mrs Ritchie when entertaining her lady
friends to tea in the drawing room, to summon
the maid from the basement. She didn’t require
anything, she just wanted to impress her friends.
The company flourished under Frederick’s
leadership and the firm gained a worldwide
reputation in 1861 for their construction of
the One O’Clock Gun time system. A master
clock on Calton Hill was linked by an
overhead electric cable to a clock at
Edinburgh Castle. This enabled the One
O’Clock gun to be fired automatically at one
o’clock. The electric cable linking the cable to
Calton Hill was 1,225 metres long. It passed
over the Waverley Valley without any support
at a height of 73 metres.
Frederick died in 1906 and the business
continued with William his eldest son
managing a new branch shop at 131 Princes
Street. Two other sons of Frederick, James and
Leone continued working in the main shop in
Leith Street. Leone continued to run the
business until retiring in 1953.
With the sale of the shop in Leith Street,
his nephew, Bertie Mitchell continued the
business from a shop in Little King Street.
Later the firm moved to larger premises at
56 Broughton Street.
Bertie was the last family member to run the
company. It continues, still bearing the name
and in 2019 moved to new premises in the
Drum Estate on the outskirts of the city.
There are more than 20,000 pictures to
explore in Capital Collections.
With thanks to Tales of One City where this
article was first published.
ter.ooo/JamesRitchie