English Debaufre type escapement and stop slide Circa 1783

Dead beat centre seconds verge watch
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An English gilt metal pair cased dead beat centre seconds verge watch with Debaufre type escapement and a stop slide, circa 1783, gilded full plate movement, decoratively pierced balance cock engraved with flowers, foliage and a bird at the neck, flat steel balance, the pyramidal-shaped pallets cut through, each with impulse face and banking piece between, numbered regulation scale, fixed barrel, square baluster pillars, stop lever activating whip on the escape wheel, signed Jas. Ryland, Ormskirk.
White enamel, Roman numerals, arcaded outer minute/seconds ring, gold hands, steel centre seconds.
Plain gilt metal inner and outer cases, start/stop lever beneath bezel at 9 o’clock, the inner with winding aperture to back and maker’s mark V incuse.
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Diameter: 48 mm
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Signed: Jas. Ryland Ormskirk
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A similar watch by James Ryland, numbered 275 and hallmarked for Chester 1783, was sold at Sotheby’s London. James Ryland is noted by Brian Loomes in Watchmakers and Clockmakers of the World as active between 1786 and his death in 1803.

The Debaufre escapement is a dead-beat frictional rest escapement invented by the London maker Peter Debaufre in about 1704. Makers in and around Ormskirk, Lancashire, revived its use in the latter part of the 18th century, also using a variation of the escapement tried by Henry Sully in about 1721-1722. Examples of these watches are often referred to as ‘Ormskirk verges’.