Cecil Rhodes’ watch to fetch hundreds at Oxfordshire auction

The watch going under the hammer was presented to 19th century politician Cecil Rhodes whose statue at Oriel College in Oxford attracted criticism due to his imperialist exploits.

The College installed an explanatory plaque which described Mr Rhodes as a “committed British colonialist” who had “obtained his fortune through exploitation of minerals, land and peoples of southern Africa”.

Mr Rhodes was a student at Oriel and left the college £100,000 when he died in 1902.

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The Cecil Rhodes statue in High Street

Now, a watch linked to Mr Rhodes is expected to fetch hundreds of pounds.

The Dent travelling watch, housed in its original wooden case, is accompanied by a handwritten note stating that it was presented to Mr Rhodes by Sir Charles Metcalfe, consulting engineer on the Cape-to-Cairo Railway project.

The note reads: “This watch was bought by the late Sir Charles Metcalfe, consulting engineer for the Cape to Cairo Railway. Sir Charles presented it to Cecil Rhodes. It was always put in Mr Rhodes’s travelling dispatch box.”

Mr Rhodes remains one of the defining and most controversial figures of the British Empire.

Having made a vast fortune through the South African diamond industry and the De Beers mining empire, he became Prime Minister of Cape Colony and pursued his dream of a British-controlled railway stretching from Cape Town to Cairo.

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William John Young’s biography (Image: Hanson Auctioneers)

The territory of Rhodesia – now Zimbabwe and Zambia – was named after him.

In his last will, he provided for the establishment of the international Rhodes Scholarship at the University of Oxford, the oldest graduate scholarship in the world.

The watch itself was made by Dent of London, a clock and watchmakers and the firm associated with the mechanism of Big Ben at the Palace of Westminster.

The timepiece was acquired by Mr Rhodes’s assistant and travelling companion, William John Young, whose remarkable memoirs describe the final days of the empire builder.

The watch was consigned for sale by Mr Young’s grandson who also lives locally and remembered his grandfather as a “very smart and upright man”.

While not wishing to be named he hoped the watch would be sold to someone who appreciated its historic worth.

The Dent travelling watch (Image: Hanson Auctioneers)

More than a century after his death, his legacy continues to provoke debate because of his role in colonial expansion and racial segregation in southern Africa.

Oriel College set up an independent commission in 2021 for the statue honouring Rhodes’ memory and this recommended the statue’s removal and the plaque in the city.

The College’s plaque acknowledged that “some of his activities led to great loss of life and attracted criticism in his day and ever since”.

The watch, along with a photo of Mr Young, and a typewritten copy of his memoir have an estimate of £800 to £1,000 at Holloways, part of the Hansons Auctioneers umbrella, in Banbury on June 17.