Cuckooland Museum
Horological museum in England, UK
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Cuckooland Museum, previously known as the Cuckoo Clock Museum, was a museum that exhibited mainly cuckoo clocks (as well as a few Black Forest fairground organs and English motorbikes), housed in the Nether Tabley Old School, Cheshire, England. The collection comprised 300 years of cuckoo clock-making history, since the 18th to the early 21st century.
| |
  Location within Cheshire | |
| Established | 1990 |
|---|---|
| Location | The Nether Tabley Old School, Chester Road, Tabley (Knutsford), WA16 0HL, England, UK |
| Coordinates | 53.2947°N 2.4237°W |
| Type | Horological museum |
| Collection size | Over 600 cuckoo clocks |
| Director | Roman Piekarski |
| Website | www.cuckoolandmuseum.com |
This private museum closed in 2024, the collection was sold for £1,000,000[1] and moved to Ireland to be exhibited in the Irish Museum of Time.[2]
Foundation
The museum was set up in 1990 by brothers Roman and Maz Piekarski, who moved to live in the premises in 1989,[3][4] after bringing together a collection of antique clocks and Black Forest cuckoo clocks, the latter was continuously increased until the museum's last years.
It became apparent to them that an important part of European clock-making history was liable to disappear if surviving examples fell into irretrievable disrepair.[5]
Both men were trained as clockmakers in Manchester from the age of 15, which is when their fascination with cuckoo clocks began. In Roman Piekarski's own words: When we started collecting in the 1970s no one wanted them because battery and electric clocks were all the rage. We picked many up for next to nothing.[6]
The collection
In the past, the horological exhibition also included other kind of timepieces such as longcase, wall and bracket clocks[7] but later on it focused on cuckoo clocks.
The museum also hosted a range of Black Forest cuckoo and quail clocks, trumpeter clocks, monks playing bells and other associated musical movements.
Cuckooland came to have over 600 cuckoo clocks of different styles, ages and manufacturers. The collection contained some of the best examples of the cuckoo clockmaker's art:
- A "cuckoo and echo" clock that emulates the whistles and bellows the bird makes in the wild and is thought to be one of only six in the world.[8]
- Timepieces by Johann Baptist Beha, one of the most reputed Black Forest cuckoo clockmaker of all times.
- Examples in Art Nouveau and other unusual styles.
- Picture frame cuckoo clocks, timepieces with a life size automaton cuckoo bird on top of the case, cuckoos with paintings of people or animals with blinking or flirty eyes, designer cuckoo clocks, etc.
One of the aims of the museum was to acquire, restore and preserve the clocks for the future generations, as well as to contribute to the appreciation of the cuckoo clock in the history of horology.
