A gold wristwatch thought to have belonged to the wartime codebreaker Alan Turing has sold at auction for £75,400, well above its expected price of up to £10,000.
The watch has a Cheltenham connection, and a rather charming reason for being given away.
A gift for a teenager who was always late
In 1976, the 9ct gold watch was given to a 15-year-old boy working part time at a hotel in Cheltenham. The gift came from Joan Clarke, a fellow codebreaker and a friend of Turing. Clarke had worked alongside him at Bletchley Park during the Second World War.
The teenager was often late for work, so Clarke gave him the watch to help him be on time. The auction house says it sadly did not improve his timekeeping.
Auction result
The watch went under the hammer at Charterhouse Auctioneers in Sherborne, Dorset, on Friday morning as the first lot of the sale. Bidding started at £5,000 and quickly rose to £22,000, the auctioneer Richard Bromell said.
It sold for a hammer price of £58,000, or £75,400 with fees. A similar watch without the Turing connection would normally sell for about £300 to £400, Mr Bromell said.
The buyer is a bidder from central England who registered about 15 minutes before the sale. Interest also came from Singapore and Switzerland.
Turing’s links
Turing is credited with helping to crack the Enigma code at Bletchley Park. He is also widely seen as one of the fathers of theoretical computer science.
The watch was engraved with the words “Our New reader of Mathematics A M Turing U.O.M.” and was presented to him when he joined the University of Manchester in 1948. It is not known when it came into Clarke’s possession.
Mr Bromell said Charterhouse had never sold a Turing item before. “There is so little out there,” he said. “This is a very personal item, and something that he would have treasured.”
