Payne & Son, the jewellers and silversmiths of Tunbridge Wells, is run by one of the oldest families of jewellers in England. Indeed the firm can trace its history back to 1790 in Wallingford. Other shops opened in Abingdon in 1825, Banbury in 1841, Tunbridge Wells in 1870 and Oxford in 1889. Today the Payne family is still represented by Michael Payne in Tunbridge Wells, the seventh generation to become a jeweller. The large clock above the shop in Tunbridge Wells High Street is itself a well-known local landmark.

Thomas Payne continued as a jeweller and watchmaker until he died in 1886, taking his brother in law Sidney William Allen into partnership in 1884 as his own health was failing. This partnership was commemorated in the old mosaic step at Clock House, which proclaimed the fact that the firm was then also a bureau de change.

Thomas's widow Helen Elizabeth continued after his death, dissolving the partnership with Sidney William Allen in 1889. An important commission for Payne & Company was to supply the Mayor's chain and badge of office, when Tunbridge Wells Borough Council was incorporated in 1889. In addition Helen Elizabeth Payne took over the business of William Fry Loof at 26, Ye Pantiles. His father, William Loof, had been a watch and clockmaker in Tunbridge Wells since 1824. The Pantiles shop was closed in 1897 in order that Helen Payne could concentrate on the High Street in her final years.

Hence Payne & Son welcomes the new millennium as not many firms can claim to have traded in four different centuries!

The Tunbridge Wells shop, with the outside clock projecting out onto the street, is itself a familiar sight. "Clock House", or 37 High Street, is one of a terrace built by William Willicombe. He ran Bramah's workshop in Tunbridge Wells and had won the esteem of Decimus Burton. His work is in the contemporary classical Victorianate style.

The terrace was built in the grounds of South Grove House in the 1850's. William Willicombe built a similar terrace on the Pantiles. It is interesting to note that the same pattern of cast iron ballustrading is found at first floor level both on the Pantiles and at "Clock House". Unfortunately, Payne & Son's neighbours have not retained this detail.

The Post Office used the shop as the setting for its national advertising campaign in 1987. They wished to show that they stayed open longer than banks and so needed a typical High Street with a clock. The problem is that Tunbridge Wells High Street has no Post Office and so a sign had to be bolted onto the wall, along with the provision of a dummy post box. Even P.H.S. of the Times Diary noticed the deception!

Payne & Son have been jewellers and silversmiths in Tunbridge Wells for over one hundred and thirty years. However, the family has been in the jewellery trade since the eighteenth century.
The business was started sometime before 1790 at Wallingford-on-Thames by Robert Keate. Indeed Britten lists him as a watchmaker in 1780. He was soon to be joined by his nephew John Payne, who is listed as a jeweller in the poll book of 6th March 1820. John's younger brother Charles is believed to have opened his shop in Abingdon in 1825. John's son John Gosford Payne joined him in Wallingford during 1835 and the latter's cousin William expanded the family tradition by becoming a jeweller in Banbury some time before the census of 1841.

John Gosford Payne died in 1861 and William Payne moved back to Wallingford with his two sons Thomas Edward and George Septimus. Meanwhile his sister Mary Harris continued the business in Banbury though by 1863 Thomas Edward Payne was running it. The Banbury business was closed down by 1869 and during the transition from Banbury to Tunbridge Wells Thomas Edward assisted his father in Wallingford.
John Braby had become a jeweller in Tunbridge Wells in 1858. He continued to run his business, proclaiming to be the only manufacturing jeweller in town, until 1870. This is the date when his shop at 3 South Grove Terrace, as 37 High Street was then called, was taken over by William Payne. It was his son Thomas Edward Payne who was the first of the family to move to Tunbridge Wells.