There is a document preserved in the Curatorship Archives regarding the proposed purchase of this English clock for the office of the general manager, Sr. Madroñero. It was offered to the Banco de España by the antique dealer Antonio Alonso Ojeda. The document mentions that it has a strong strike, playing the Westminster Cathedral and Winterthur Abbey chimes. It was considered to be a work of great quality and was purchased on 14 November 1970. The document is signed by Sr. José Manuel Ferrer, curator of the Banco de España.

The dial of this longcase regulator with mahogany case is signed by furniture manufacturer Maple & Co of London. The hood has a moulded semicircular arch with a gilded bronze baluster finial in the centre. The glazed door over the dial is flanked by two pairs of columns, with part of the shaft fluted, and a Doric capital. At the sides, there are fretwork wooden plates to allow the strike to be heard and to protect the movement from dust.

The trunk is straight and decorated with a column —similar to those of the hood— on either side of the glazed door. The three weights, pendulum and eight chiming tubes are visible behind the door. The rectangular base section is ornamented on the front with square moulding. The sides of the case are made of wood.

The dial is in gilded brass, and the chapter ring is silver. The hours are shown in Roman numerals and the minutes in Arabic numerals, all engraved and coloured black. Below the figure XII, there is a silver subsidiary dial for the seconds hand. In the middle of the dial, there is a subsidiary dial with a STRIKE/SILENT control. The rest of the dial is decorated with chiselled gilded brass plaques. On the spandrels and flanking the strike dial, there are cherub heads and vegetal motifs. Signed on the lower edge between the 35 and 25: 'MAPLE & Co / Ltd LONDON' The hands are in blued metal with blue reflections.

It has a three-train English movement — one going train and two striking trains which sound the hours, quarters and half-hours. The pendulum has a vial for the mercury.

John Maple opened a small furniture shop on London's Tottenham Court Road in the mid-nineteenth century. In the 1880s, with the help of his son Sir John Blundell Maple, he grew the business to become the largest furniture shop in the world. His furniture was known for its excellent quality and specialised in copying antique designs -Hepplewhite and Chippendale– and giving them a modern touch. Following the Second World War, with changing tastes and a boom in mass production, the company's fortunes began to decline. In 1980, furniture manufacturer Waring & Gillow entered into partnership with Maple & Co., and the firm was renamed 'Maple, Waring & Gillow'.

Amelia Aranda Huete