The "wandering hour dial" was originally devised for domestic clocks. It was intended to be back-lit with a lamp, so that the time could be read in the hours of darkness. Its invention is generally attributed to the  Campani brothers in Rome, c.1656 and is said to be the result of a commission from Pope Alexander VII (1655-1667)
The Campani brothers' distinctive design was quickly adopted by other Italian makers and also by a number of the most distinguished clockmakers in London. These included Ahasuerus Fromanteel of Moses Alley in Southwark, Edward East, Henry Jones and  Joseph Knibb of Fleet Street, John Hilderson of Chesell Street and Robert Seignior. Among known owners of a night clock was the Queen of England, Catherine of Braganza. Samuel Pepys wrote of her  bedchamber that she had nothing there "but some pretty pious pictures and some books of devotion, and her holy water at her head as she sleeps, with her clock by her bedside, wherein a lamp burns that tells her the time of the night at any hour."
By the end of the 17th century, the design had been adapted for use in watchmaking, not for back-lighting, but to avoid the friction created by conventional concentric hands.
One of the most celebrated London watch-makers to adopt the design was Joseph Windmills (Master of the Clockmakers' Company in 1702). It was because of Windmills's association with St. Martin's le Grand (a street about 130 metres from the Newgate  Clock, where Windmills first set up in business), that the Newgate Clock was designed in the way that it was.