Our newest exhibition is in the Great Hall and is called Keeping Time. The theme of this exhibition is the notion of collecting. It has been laid out to demonstrate the collecting of fine art pieces as Frederick Gershom Parkington did, but it also draws on the other elements of the Borough's collection. These range from the Allen collection of American clocks, local makers, and the novelty pieces; the flintlock alarm-clock, the Banjo clock and so on. St Edmundsbury's Horology collection is not the largest in the Country but certainly one of the finest.

The links on the left of this page take you to the Horology web pages, which set out to  tell how we have learned to measure time, and how historically that process has helped to define our whole way of life and some of the story of Horology.

Einstein's Theory of General Relativity shows us a world in which space and time fuse to become four dimensional 'space-time'. We cannot see time, but we can see things moving which tell us that time is passing, we can then use that movement in the world around us to tell the time.

Throughout recorded history we have striven to develop more precise and regulated mechanisms, or 'movement', which aim to give us an objective measure of time. It is an extraordinary story and it involves the creation of some of the most wonderful and beautiful, as well as some of the weirdest devices ever produced by human ingenuity.  These pages also provide an opportunity to explore one of the finest horological collections in existence. Based on the superb collection assembled by Frederic Gershom Parkington, and bequeathed to him in 1953 to the Borough of St Edmundsbury in memory of his son, it has been continuously added to over the years so that it now ranges over the whole field of time measuring instruments, from the simplest to the most sophisticated, from the very beginnings to the present time.