Manuscript, in multiple hands, of a collection of recipes for preparing cements and dyes, oils, waxes, varnishes, laquers, solders, metals, ivory, stones, glass, tortoise shell, and other materials used to make and repair clocks and watches; also includes instructions on how to make a seal from any impression, formulas for determining the number of teeth on wheels for an 8-day clock; instructions on making "storm glass" or barameter. The manuscript was possibly a manual that passed down within a family of tradesmen. An entry part, possibly the fourth owner, gives a brief summary of his relationship to the Wardle famiy of Framlington, also Northumberland. Laid in are three leaves (now shelved separately), the first dated 3 June 1810 in which the curate Angus Hutton provides an extract from the Register of Baptism for the Chapelry of Framlington recording the 1726 baptism of Ann, daughter of George Wardle; the second, a copy of a 1725 entry in the Parish Regiser of Alnwick signed by the minister John Johnson recording the christening of Anne daughter of John Marshall, Stony Hills; finally a scrap, not contemporary to the rest of the material, recording the baptism on 2 Oct. 1790, Henry son of Henry and Ann Trotter. Besides recipes related to the watchmaking trade, the notebook includes recipes for dyeing hair and for toothaches; a recipe for making white gunpowder and another for "marking ink"; also a recipe to "brown gun barrels".
