Watch Making Workshop, Prescot, Merseyside
This detached workshop is at the rear of houses in Grosvenor Road. It dates from the late 19th century and was used for watch making. This workshop is one of the best preserved in Prescot. The town was the most important centre in Europe for the production of clock and watch parts and tools from the mid 18th to the mid 19th century. Watch making was a domestic or cottage industry. Masters put out work to individual or small groups of craftsmen in small workshops, often behind or attached to their homes. Workshops generally had 2 floors. Coarser metalworking was done on the ground floor. The finer, more delicate work was done on the top floor which was lit by rows of windows. The last watch making workshop in Prescot closed in 1952.
