William Frankland

William Frankland was born in Bengal during the Governorship of his father there. Setting out for Europe in 1760, he made what was a highly adventurous journey for such a time.

Disguising himself as a Tartar messenger, he crossed the Persian Gulf, made his way from Baghdad to Jerusalem, and visited the site of Babylon and the ruins of storied Palmyra. Enterprise and daring, with the instinct for wandering in unfrequented ways, was in all the Franklands, for they descended from Cromwell through his daughter Frances.

When his travels ended, William settled down here as owner of Muntham and devoted himself for the last forty years of his life to study and mechanical science.

He had a genius for machines and those he could not make with his own hands he invented and had erected by the most skilled workmen he could find.

He made the old house a wonderland. One room was devoted to lathes which performed work of the most delicate and complicated character, from wood-turning for busts to the most delicate medals wrought in wood.

He had a unique collection of clocks and watches ; another room contained machinery for winding, spinning, and other textile processes in miniature ; yet another was devoted to printing by ingenious machines, and elsewhere he was rich in various musical instruments automatically operated, with machines for generating electricity, and optical apparatus of every kind known in his age, all these from his own designs.

Here he lived his happy laborious life, a century too soon for common acceptance of his ideas, foreshadowing the avenues by which the nation was to advance from hit-or-miss handwork to the precision of machinery.

He died in 1805, aged 85, and his collection realised remarkable prices, one turning-lathe being sold for three thousand guineas.

 

 

 

 

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