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In Charles Kemp, who had been working in his elder brother’s jewellery shop in the then fashionable shopping area of Stokes Croft, went into business with his younger brother Edward, who was working at the Goldsmiths’ Alliance on College Green. Their father William, an accountant, lent them £400, a considerable sum in those days when clerks were beginning to aspire to the level of £1 a week in remuneration, with Which to start a business of their own.

A fourth Kemp brother was able to supply them with stock from his wholesale clock business in Bridge Street. Businesses, like clocks, run on wheels within wheels. The two new merchant adventurers opened their Watchmakers and Jewellers shop at No. 4 Union Street, ideally located on the edge of the major shopping quarter bounded by Wine Street and Castle Street. Today No. 4, at the top of Union Street, is near the entrance to the Galleries Shopping Centre.

Following the age-old custom of their trade they not only sold but bought old gold, silver and gems, whose value rarely drops. Edward Kemp left Bristol for Leicester in 1900 leaving Charles to carry on aided by H E Tyrell, who stayed for forty years and became a partner soon after Edward’s departure.

Twelve years later the firm was strengthened by the addition of Charles’ son Milford and, a year later, by Sidney and, in 1921 by his third son Clifford. Milford’s two sons, Brian and Michael, also came into the business and most recently Brian’s daughter Margaret has become the fourth generation of the family in the firm after abandoning her career as a Ward Sister at Southmead Hospital. Soon after the founding of the business Kemp Brothers began making turret clocks,these were designed and made on the premises,patterns being made in wood and then cast by a firm in Fishponds.

On 15th November 1899 Queen Victoria opened the Convalescent Home near the Downs later to become Bristol Maternity Hospital and now used as offices. As she sat outside in her carriage she pressed a button to open the Home and also to start the clock that had been made by Kemp Brothers. But the pressing of the button only rang the bell in the clock tower and it was one of the Kemp Brothers’ clock-makers who actually set the clock going.

Another clock made by Kemp Brothers is in the Uriah Thomas Memorial at the top of Blackboy Hill. The original dial and hands of this memorial clock are still in place but the first mechanical movement has been replaced with an electric one. Other well known clocks made by the firm included the chime clock on the former Pro-Cathedral, continuing the early Kemp tradition of making, installing and servicing church tower clocks.

The old Western Daily Press premises in Baldwin Street bore a Kemp Brothers clock dating from the days when few carried watches and relied on visible clocks on public buildings for their time keeping. Charles Hill’s Dockyard was another such clock upon which a once vital area of the Bristol economy relied.

Some of the firm’s clocks were also sent abroad, one was installed at Peking Railway Station in the early 1900s when the British and French ran the Chinese power and communications systems.

As well as clocks the manufacture of sliver and sliver-plated goods was carried out on the premises. Charles Kemp had been unable to buy articles that he thought were of a high enough standard to sell in his shop and so decided to make them himself. Tea sets, cake baskets, tankards, spoons and forks among other things were made in solid silver and silver plate.

There was a polishing shop with four electric motors and the largest silver plating vat in the West of England. The workshops were always busy, but during the First World War they had to be closed half an hour early because of the restriction on the use of electricity. When Milford Kemp came into the business he combined his duties in the shop with travelling the South West of England selling the ‘Kembro’plate to hotels, restaurants and the then popular ice-cream parlours.

Special commissions were also made by the skilled craftsmen in the silversmith workshop, including a model of a Racing Skiff in 9ct gold. The seats and foot rockers moved as in a real Skiff, and it was so much admired that two more were made in solid silver. The Skull and Crossbones Tobacco Box in silver was made in 1914 for the Bristol Savages and is still in evidence at each of their meetings. By 1933 the firm was expanding and took over, Fisher and Co’s shop next door and towards the end of the 1930s was employing fifty people.

All this came to a disastrous end when the Blitz of 24th November 1940 totally destroyed much of the Bristol shopping centre including Kemp Brother’s shop and factory, the building burning for several days as several tons of coal had just been delivered for the boiler fire. Fortunately a shop near to the Odeon Cinema at 29 Union Street was vacant.

John Jones who worked for the firm as clock maker for forty years until he was

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