After Stroud District Council (SDC) writes seeking advice, Historic England (HE) issues comments on the council’s proposal to potentially relocate the Blackboy Clock to a local museum.

HE’s advises that the Grade II-listed Blackboy House derives ‘significance’ from the clock; ‘the removal of the clock would harm the significance of both Blackboy House and the Top of the Town conservation area’. HE also finds ‘a number of aspects of the clock’s history and context unexplored, and therefore [SDC] did not provide as full an account of the clock as would be desirable, whether to inform public debate about its future or to support a possible application for its removal’. ‘This is not to suggest that the report is wrong to state that the figure must be understood in the context of the transatlantic slave trade and of empire, whether direct or indirect, but this is not its full context.’