Not a 'Potts' clock! (See my blog last Friday) The clock above the stables and coach houses at Dunham Massey has an unusual painted face showing the date 1721. (A year in which not much else seemed to happen, though Bach finished his Brandenburg Concertos.) George Booth, 2nd Earl of Warrington, inherited the run-down Dunham Massey estate at the tender age of 19 and dedicated his life to restoring its fortunes. The house that exists today was mostly built in the 1730s and it was George that planted the many beautiful trees around the estate. He married a wealthy heiress for her dowry but the marriage was very unhappy; when he died his only child, Mary, inherited the estate and had a better time by the sound of it, married to Harry Grey, Earl of Stamford. The house and estate then stayed in the Grey family for several generations.
It is an appealing clock face. Is that Earl Grey an ancestor of the Earl Grey for whom the tea is named? Wikipedia says the tea is named for a British prime minister in the 1830s.
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