Above photo, pre 1920.

Above Google image, December 2013.

Above clock photo kindly sent to me by Edward Burd who says it dates from circa 1805, and I assume Thomas Sutton was the clock maker and not the licensee.

Further research tells me that Thomas Sutton was indeed a clock maker, working in Maidstone from between 1790 and 1823.

Local News on this day 13th December 1894.

On the evening of 10th December, the borough coroner Mr. R. T. Tatham held an inquest at the "Bell Hotel," Week Street, on the body of an infant named Harry Hadlow, who died on the previous Friday, under rather singular circumstances.

Mr Reynolds of Week Street was chosen as foreman of the jury.

The body having been viewed, the child's father Charles Hadlow, a labourer at the South Eastern railway, identified the body. The child was eleven months and the family lived at Bell Cottage, Church Street. He had left home on Friday morning after breakfast, the child was on the hearth rug, eating a piece of bread and butter. Just as he went indoors to diner, his wife screamed and looking at the child, he saw what he believed to be a fit or convulsion. He immediately got some hot water and the infant in it, but the child died. Dr Strouts was sent for, but the child was already deceased. Dr Strouts stated the death was due to constriction of the throat.

The Coroner Mr. Tatham stated it was a singular death and in fact he had never heard of a similar cause. Dr Strouts said the father could not have done a better thing than put the infant in hot water, but nothing could have been done, for the infant who had been well cared for. The throat was closed and death was due to suffocation. The construction was not caused through eating, it was a muscle affliction, the jury returned a verdict of death from natural causes.