John Knibb
English clockmaker and politician
John Knibb (1650–1722) was an English clockmaker born in Claydon, Oxfordshire. He produced various clocks and watches including bracket clocks, lantern clocks, longcase clocks, and some wall-clocks, as well as building and maintaining several turret clocks. Even though his main market was catering to customers of modest means, he also dominated the higher-quality sector. Only six of Knibb's watches are known to survive.
Life
Knibb was born in 1650, the sixth son of Thomas and Elizabeth Knibb of Claydon, Oxfordshire. He was cousin to the clock- and instrument maker Samuel Knibb (1625–70) and younger brother of the distinguished clock- and watchmaker Joseph Knibb (1640–1711).
In about 1664 Knibb moved from Claydon to Oxford to join his elder brother as either an apprentice or an assistant. In 1670, Samuel Knibb died and Joseph moved to London to replace him, leaving John in charge in Oxford. However, John was not a freeman of the City of Oxford, so all the clocks that he made still had to be signed "Joseph Knibb".
In 1672, Knibb applied to become a freeman of Oxford, and the Mayor and City Council proposed that he should be admitted for a fee of £30.
“John Knibb” enters the record as english clockmaker and politician. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what John, Knibb and English can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6243310. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1650, 1722, 1625 and 1640.
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This entry incorporates text from “John Knibb” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.