Science & Engineering

The museums, the machines and the men and women who worked it out: laboratories kept as they were, beam engines under steam, the tunnel, the barrier, the roofs, and the plaques on the houses where the ideas came.

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John Harrison's tomb, Hampstead

The grave of the carpenter who solved longitude, in the churchyard of St John-at-Hampstead, with the story on the tomb.

Statues & plaquesFree

Photo by Tilman2007, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Harrison spent forty years building the clocks that could keep time at sea and so fix a ship's longitude, fought the Board of Longitude for the prize, and won it from George III in 1773 at eighty; he died in 1776 and lies under a chest tomb by the south wall of the churchyard on Church Row, with an inscription that tells the whole story, restored by the Clockmakers' Company. The clocks themselves are at the Observatory in Greenwich and H5 is at the Science Museum; the churchyard has Constable a few yards away.

Where
St John-at-Hampstead, Church Row, NW3 6UU
Nearest station
Hampstead · 3 min walk

The churchyard is open in daylight; the tomb is by the south wall.

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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.

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