This weekend Jen and I visited the Connecticut Clock Museum in Bristol, CT. I must admit that this visit was mostly unplanned and spawned more from a random flipping through a CT guide book than from a passion for museums or clocks. Surprisingly, this turned out to be one of the most fun museum trips I’ve experienced! The Clock Museum is a small museum made up of maybe 6 or 7 good sized rooms. The establishment has about 2,500 clocks on display. Clocks of every type and every material. Old wood clocks, cheap plastic clocks, wristwatches, pocketwatches and gorgeous elaborate skeleton clocks.
Jen and I specifically scheduled our visit for an arrival at the noon gonging. Wisely, the museum does not perfectly sync every clock. Instead, while most are within about 5 minutes of one another, a large portion show completely arbitrary times. This means that even those visitors that show up at 3:06 on a Tuesday may hear chiming.
At noon we walked into a room full of clocks. Big clocks. Grandfather clock after grandfather clocked stood guard around the room; the walls were nearly covered in banjo clocks and lantern clocks and more types of clocks than you could imagine.
The sound of these clocks all ticking and tocking had a remarkably calming quality to it. I sat with my eyes closed listening to the unique rhythm. And then, one by one, they began to chime.
I took some video of this experience and will be working to edit it over the next few days for publishing. In the meantime, I encourage you to visit CT’s clock museum. Note: They will be closing for the season come Thanksgiving so if you want to visit this year, time is running short!