10/12/13 Walking into this workshop, you would be forgiven for thinking that you had wound your clock back two hundred years. Wooden benches, pulley-
10/12/13 Walking into this workshop, you would be forgiven for thinking that you had wound your clock back two hundred years. Wooden benches, pulley-wheels and belts power ancient lathes and equipment. Rather like layers of geological time unwinding all around you, stacks of cogwheels, clock faces and hand-tools are reminders of an era when British craftsmen and engineers made things that were the envy of the World. But this is William Haycock Ltd, the oldest family-run clock making business in Britain. Six generations of Haycocks have made clocks in Ashbourne, Derbyshire. “It takes time to make things here”, said Neil Haycock, 47. “We don’t like to work to deadlines as every job needs doing properly”, he added. Neil and his father, Charles, 79, have already begun making a collection to mark the family’s bi-centenary of clock making in the town in two year's time. “We’re starting with three Crown Patern Skeleton clocks. We first made these for The Great Exhibition in 1851. We were very noted makers of these clocks and originals are now very sought after. We made the last one in 1890 and still have the original tooling to make them. “Other manufactures have begun mass-producing similar styled pieces again but they’re much smaller than ours and certainly aren’t made in the traditional way. We make all the parts here and each one takes many months to make.” The skeleton clocks retail at £9,000. “During the First World War we made munitions and in the Second we made engine parts for Rolls Royce. We’ve still got some dowel pins from the Spitfire’s Merlin engine around here somewhere” said Neil. William Haycock were recently commissioned, by a German museum, to make replicas of Richard Arkwright’s spinning machinery like the ones originally used in Cromford Mill. “Back in the day these were the first machines. The only craftsmen that made things from metal were blacksmiths and clockmakers. So clockmakers were the obvious choice to make the first precision machi
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Photo credit: © Rod Kirkpatrick / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ashbourne, british, clock, clocks, crafts, craftsman, derbyshire, engineering, fsp, fstoppress, haycock, maker, press, skeleton, stop, tradition, watch, william, workshop
