With Simon Nocivelli contacting me in November 2021 & saying would you like to come & see my John Boot clocks, I was overjoyed to hear that they were in Sutton & swiftly made arrangements to go & photograph them at his Kings Caffe in King Street. Simon's cafe is literally only 15 meters from where John Boot's workshop was situated on the corner of King Street & New Street.
When I was young in the 1960's the shop which occupied this corner location was Shepperson's Cycles, Television & Radio shop & I can remember my dad taking me there for some bicycle parts & Mr. Shepperson lead us through the shop & out into the back yard were there were some old brick buildings to the right & some old stone buildings to the left which had large yard gates attached which opened out onto New Street (this is the old New Street, not the present one, please see map) & the cycle parts were in one of these stone buildings. I cannot prove this, but I strongly believe these stone buildings may have been John Boot's workshops. Many years later when New Street was pedestrianised with block paving & the "new" New Street then ran at the back of these stone buildings as it does today & parallel to King Street, I can still visualise these stone buildings & those big yard gates. To my surprise I have now found a photo of some of the brick buildings from the "new" New Street on this website. The stone buildings were to the right of this shot & the large gates were just around the corner.
https://picturethepast.org.uk/image-library/image-details/poster/ptpn001468/posterid/ptpn001468.html
I have coloured New Street - green, King Street - yellow, Shepperson's shop - blue, brick buildings - purple & stone buildings - orange. There have been many street changes in this part of Sutton with modernisation & King Street is only half as long as long as this map shows with today's Langton Road cutting it into two & Langton Court Flats being built on the left hand section of King Street. Today a doctors surgery is now built on the site of Shepperson's/John's workshop. I have added this link to the 1900 & modern map side by side to show how this area has changed. If you put your cursor on New Street on the modern map, it shows you what was demolished to build this street.
As you will have read in my first John Boot post which I kicked off in 2014, I expected to find many John Boot clocks still to be in Sutton, but that turned out to be the opposite, until now. I have since been a second time to photograph Simon's latest acquisition, an Isaac Boot example with a 8 day movement which now numbers 6 complete clocks, various dials & workings in his collection. The other 5 complete clocks have 30 hour movements. Simon tells me Isaac was an Innkeeper by trade, so clockmaking may have been his hobby. So below are my photos from the two shoots. A search of the web has revealed three more Isaac Boot clocks have been sold at auction. It's strange how historians have never recorded Isaac as a clockmaker. Many Thanks Simon for helping me bring this new post to the web.
No.1 - John Boot junior & William Boot.
No.2 - John Boot.
