The 'Blackboy' Clock in Stroud

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Dan Guthrie and Tommy Maddinson

The Blackboy Clock has a childlike figure with black skin, red lips and a gold leaf skirt. We've chosen not to replicate the image in all its detail here.

Introduction

Many of the colonial statues examined as part of the Cast in Stone project are colossal, overbearing figures that are testament to the pride and hubris that once ran through the lifeblood of empire: think of the 36-foot tall Wellington Monument in Hyde Park, for instance, or the Victoria Memorial at Buckingham Palace which stands at over 80 feet.

There is a danger, however, in concentrating our critical attention only on the most visible statues of “imperial heroes” in urban spaces. Empire transformed the urban environment of Britain's imperial metropoles, whether it be London, Bristol, or Glasgow, but it also fundamentally reshaped its 'green and pleasant land' in ways that are often difficult to discern. The complex dynamics of postwar imperial migration, housing segregation, and white flight, processes which funnelled many postcolonial migrants into decaying urban spaces, not only shielded much of Britain's countryside from meaningfully reckoning with the loss of empire, but delayed a proper recognition of the birth – or rather renewal – of a truly multicultural society with the arrival of the Windrush generation. Moreover, we need to be attentive to the long history of artistic depictions of people of colour in Britain, as well as the ways in which architectural sculpture and decorative elements have functioned as a visual language of race and racism across the country.

The "Blackboy Clock" in Stroud is one such instructive example. A large clock attached to a building and accompanied by a blackamoor caricature of an African child, the Blackboy Clock has been the subject of intense and ongoing public discussions over the racist statuette it incorporates since 2021. The important work of local anti-racist activists has ignited a local - and even national - debate over what should be done with this clock. Local activist and filmmaker Dan Guthrie, working in conjunction with Stroud District Council, has been a significant force in not only developing original research into the clock's longer history, but also helping to support community consultation over the appropriate actions to be taken in response.

Building on this original research, this case study adopts a chronological approach to understanding the complex racialised object that is the Blackboy Clock. It starts by looking at the early origins of the statuette and the history of the Blackamoor trope in European decorative arts. The study then shifts gears to focus on local efforts to restore and preserve the statue in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. It concludes by reflecting on the contestation over the Blackboy Clock from 2020 onwards and what the clock has to say about Black childhood today.

"Black Boy" figures and Blackamoor sculpture

The Blackboy Clock was first assembled in 1774 by local watchmaker John Miles, who, according to Paul Hawkins Fisher, set it up with 'a large dial-face, and the figure of a n****-boy with a bell before him, on which he sounded the hours with a club' on the front of his house on Kendrick Street. It is unclear whether Miles produced the blackamoor caricature himself, and the figure of the boy may precede this date. He may possibly have had a familial connection to the Miles family, who were from the South West and were involved in transatlantic slavery.

As such, the exact origins of the statuette are hazy. The object bears some resemblance to painted wooden figures of “Black Boys” that were used as tobacconists' shop signs in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as exemplified by this figure in the collection of Bolton Museums. According to Catherine Molineux, who examined these types of figures at length in her work Faces of Perfect Ebony: Encountering Atlantic Slavery in Imperial Britain, 'hundreds of versions of the Black Boy signboard appeared across the urban landscape of Georgian Britain' in this period.

The blackamoor figure and visual trope has a long history in the European decorative arts. The English words 'moor' and 'blackamoor' originate from the Iberian word Mouro and Castilian/Italian word moro, derived from the Latin maurus, which were used to designate North African people in the early modern world. The term appears with increasing frequency in seventeenth century England, particularly as English colonial expansion to the Americas and slave-trading with West Africa began to gather pace. This emerging lexicon of racial difference developed in tandem with a new visual language of race through elite paintings and sculpture, which often deployed images of black people in subservient positions as a means to enhance the image of wealthy white Britons. Examples of this type of blackamoor art at historic homes managed by the National Trust include the stands at Dyrham Park in Gloucestershire, which date back to at least 1700, and the Grade-II listed Dunham Massey Hall sundial in Cheshire, which depicts a kneeling Black man with a sundial on his head. The British Public Monuments Related To Slavery database lists at least 30 entries related to 'blackamoor' sculpture across the UK dating between 1700 and 1889, although the actual number may be far higher as many of these objects would have been kept inside private properties. As one of the most visible symbols of racist decorative art forms, blackamoor sculpture is increasingly the site of contestation and re-interpretation in the present day.

The Blackboy Clock figure displays clear links to the art style of blackamoor sculpture as described by art historians like Molineux, Hannah Lee and Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby. The half-nakedness of the boy, wearing only a loose feathered skirt, marks him out as an enslaved person. His lack of clothing combined with the skirt signifies his Black body as unfree, lacking the civility and propriety that the white European imagination connected with being clothed. The skirt evokes contemporary tropes of Indigenous people in the Americas, speaking to the colonial encounters involved in the transatlantic world, while his pearl drop earrings subtly associate African culture with the wearing of jewellery. The statuette's pairing with the clock adds an additional layer of bondage: the boy has been physically fixed to the wall with a metal bar attached to his neck, so that his head can grotesquely twist at the beginning and end of the clock-striking sequence.

Restoring the Blackboy Clock

In the nineteenth century, the Blackboy Clock was relocated twice: first to the Duke of York pub in Nelson Street in the 1830s, and then to Castle Street in 1844 after being bought by public subscription. The clock was placed as a decorative sculpture for the new National School for Girls building, which later became known as "Black Boy school". The historical record so far on the history of the clock itself is quiet for the next century until the 1940s, when it was reported that the clock's mechanism had stopped working. After being inspected for restoration in 1962, the clock was removed for restoration in August 1974. The Castle Street building, now home to Stroud Teachers' Centre, had been given Grade II listing two months prior in June that year.

Newspaper clippings from the 1970s sheds some light on these restoration efforts. On August 15th, 1974, Stroud News and Journal published an illustrated piece titled 'Experts are restoring the Black Boy and his 200-year-old clock'. The article interviewed Michael Maltin, a retired RAF pilot and clock enthusiast, on the condition of the clock. Maltin described the black figure as being 'in a rather sorry state', with a missing arm and rotten head. Three years later, in September 1977, Stroud News and Journal published another illustrated article on the completion of the restoration works. While the clock had been repaired by Matlin, the blackamoor caricature was repaired by Pat Conolly, a member of the Guild of Gloucestershire Craftsmen, and guided and painted by signwriter B. M. Durn.

Comparing the photographs of the statue in 1974 and 1977 indicate the (re)racialisation of the statue from these restoration works. In 1974, the wooden figure is clearly in a poor and decaying condition, with its club-holding arm having been broken off. In 1977, we can see the figure has now been repainted with a shiny coat of black paint for his body and hair, while his lips have been painted bright red, and the boy's eyes, the club, and the skirt have all been restored. The news article noted that 'the only thing remaining to be solved is what sort of leaves the black boy has round his waist'.

As these visual details show, the work involved in restoring the clock combined wood craftsmanship with race-making practices. Racialised colours – particularly black and red paint – were used to preserve the "authenticity" of the blackamoor caricature. Viewed from one angle, this earlier blackamoor art style seems to have collided with the iconography of blackface minstrelsy during the restoration procedures. The restorers may have (consciously or unconsciously) based their repainting of the boy on the lingering figure of the "golliwog" doll, a notoriously racist symbol which emerged out of the minstrel theatre shows of the nineteenth century. By the 1960s and 1970s, communities across Britain were increasingly vocal in objecting to these dolls and minstrelsy in television shows. In July 1978, less than a year after the restoration of the statuette, the BBC finally scrapped the long running Black and White Minstrel Show.

These restoration procedures carried out in the 1970s, as well as later work in the early 2000s, raise important questions about the role of local denial, disavowal, and ignorance in recognising and even embellishing the clock as a racist symbol. For all of the local pride over this "horological curiosity", why did the postwar community in Stroud not perceive it as an object whose time really should have been up?

The predictable response would be that the Black boy figure is a small, hard to see object that easily blends into the background. Yet there are clearly deeper factors at play in the history of this caricature, and two factors might help us to contextualise this inability to recognise the clock's racist iconography.

The first factor is Stroud's Anti-Slavery Arch, located on the other side of town, which provides an interesting historical counterpart to the Blackboy Clock. Erected in 1834 after Britain abolished slavery throughout its empire – alongside over £20 million in compensation payouts to slave-owners – the Arch was built as the grand entrance to the Farmhill Park mansion by Henry Wyatt, a wealthy local businessman involved with the Stroud Anti-Slavery Society. As one of Britain's oldest anti-slavery memorials, the Arch has attracted much local support in its preservation. The memorial was first given Grade II listing in 1951 and has been restored at least twice, first by Stroud District Council in the 1960s and then by 'The Anti-Slavery Arch Group' in the early 2000s. In 2007, the memorial was upgraded to Grade II* listing in conjunction with the bicentennial celebrations of the abolition of the slave-trade.

The Stroud Anti-Slavery Arch has clearly been the source of much local pride. Yet it's important to remember that the abolition has often functioned as a screen memory for the history of British slavery, a comfortable narrative of moral triumph that buried the violent legacies left behind. Eric Williams put it best when he remarked 'British historians write almost as if Britain had introduced … slavery solely for the satisfaction of abolishing it'. Perhaps this selective memory of slavery and abolition in Stroud prevented a deeper local reckoning with the legacies of race and racism, which are manifested so clearly by the enduring presence of this blackamoor caricature. The town arguably cannot disentangle its story of abolition from that of slavery, whether that be through the history of its cloth industry (reliant on transatlantic raw materials) or locals such as Samuel Baker, Peter Hawker, and Caroline Hawker, who were all compensated for slavery in the 1830s. The material legacies of transatlantic slavery are inscribed across the full length of the Cotswolds, exemplified by buildings like Snowshill Manor and Sezincote House to the north or Lypiatt Park and Dodington Park to the south.

The other important factor at play in the misrecognition of the clock is, of course, the rural racism of the 1970s. Reconstructing the historical experience of people of colour in these rural spaces is challenging terrain, with their memories often held in personal photographs and stories rather than in any official archives. The snippets we do have, however, are suggestive as to some of the attitudes of white Britons towards people of colour at the time. In July 1970, for instance, Marian M. Wilcox (who lived near to the clock on Acre St) wrote to Stroud News and Journal to complain of 'Licence For Minorities', patronisingly describing minorities as 'poor dear creatures' perpetrating 'litter, nuisance and damage' on the town. Wilcox's complaint came two years after Enoch Powell's fanatical "Rivers of Blood" speech railing against mass immigration into Britain. Racist television shows like It Ain't Half Hot Mum, Love Thy Neighbour, Mind Your Language, and the aforementioned Black and White Minstrel Show continued to be beamed into the nation's homes across the decade of the 1970s.

Contested heritage in the twenty-first century

The most recent history of the Blackboy Clock, that of its growing contestation since 2020, has been well-covered in local and national newspapers. It is beyond the scope of this case study to reconstruct the full history of events in relation to Stroud District Council's consultation over the statue, but the clock has clearly been an important micro-site of struggle amidst the broader “culture wars” in the UK. The debates over its future have involved a unique interlocking of local and national politics, drawing in local anti-racism groups, the Council, local MP Siobhan Baillie, national newspaper outlets, and far-right actors like Britain First. Dan Guthrie has been at the centre of these conversations, having spent most of his life living in Stroud, with the clock sitting on the same street at his primary school and being a feature of the landscape on his walk to secondary school. Since 2020, Guthrie has carried out the bulk of the research into the clock's history to create a previously non-existent timeline of events regarding its history, as well as being involved in Stroud District Council's consultation and recommendations. As of 2022, the Council have accepted the recommendation to pursue the removal of the blackamoor figure, although this is subject to the complexities of the planning system and the current ‘retain and explain' government guidance. However, plans are underway to develop a new plaque to go up near to where the clock is currently situated.

Many of the statue's contemporary defenders have pointed to its significance as a Jacquemart or Jack clock, although it is certainly curious to see the number of self-proclaimed horological enthusiasts has grown exponentially since 2020. What does seem notable, however, is the lack of reflection upon the statue's depiction of childhood, particularly as it has historically been attached to a school building. As we know, transatlantic slavery violently and radically circumscribed the childhoods of Black people across the Atlantic world. The legacies of those racial formations have been continually re-inscribed across the contemporary lives of Black children in modern Britain. Black kids across this country are forced to either grow up too soon or, all too often, they are not allowed to grow up at all. The Blackboy Clock connects many complex threads of history - blackamoor sculpture, transatlantic slavery, and the colonial countryside - but, ultimately, we should not lose sight of what the clock has always been: a deeply disturbing depiction of a young Black boy. Perhaps it is time we let this young man grow up and pass on, rather than freezing him in the cold cruelty of the past.

Cast in Stone

Statues and memories of empire in post-imperial France and Britain