There doesn't seem much room for cooking in Dr David Firth's kitchen. It's a clutter of old and new technology – three state-of-the-art flat-screen televisions are placed conveniently for watching while he works on the cases and innards of his grandfather clocks.

A teddy boy jacket is hanging from a rack. It's what he goes jiving in at Fifties and Sixties nights.

The dial of one clock is attached to a wooden jig and under repair. It's one of 250 he owns and he is looking for a permanent showcase for them all. Many have just gone on display at a free exhibition in York for a year, but he would like a settled home where the public can come and learn more about Yorkshire's remarkable clock-making history.
A Quaker and a semi-retired GP, David Firth is a practical and sporting man of some accomplishment. He has an infectious enthusiasm for various activities, including rock n'roll, but it's grandfather clocks that are his abiding passion – his email address name is "clocdoc".

It's his singular approach to the subject which lends it a fascination for ordinary people as well as for the horologist.

In some families, the steady pulse of an heirloom grandfather clock (a longcase clock), may have echoed through the lives of generations. Before radio and television, it was the single constant note in many homes.

Today, that sonorous tick-tock, heard once more, can release old memories and bring to the surface forgotten incidents in a family's collective memory. That's why it's the social history of the owners of grandfather clocks, as well as the makers of them, which intrigues David Firth.

He says collecting them is like a treasure hunt, a history lesson and a mystery tour combined. Formerly senior medical officer for occupational health in Leeds, he started on the grandfather clock trail 30 years ago when he bought one, made in 1910, for £5.

Through a friend he met a talented local joiner who made a living out of buying and selling and building his own cases for clocks needing attention. "He'd tart it up and sell it on and he was still trading when he was into his 90s," says Dr Firth.

His friend the joiner was following a long Yorkshire tradition. Perhaps the greatest clockman of all time, John Harrison, came from just such an ordinary woodworking background which was the springboard for his invention of a reliable marine chronometer. And it was Yorkshire artisans who took up the opportunities the new clockmaking business presented.

"Until the 1670s, longcase clocks were mostly made in London," says Dr Firth. "The northern influence grew stronger when London makers switched their attention to bracket clocks."

Soon there were 2,000 makers throughout the county. Every town had their own – six in Wetherby, 40 in Leeds, 30 in Wakefield and 20 to 30 in York. Halifax and Hebden Bridge, lying on the route through from Lancashire and open to new clock-making ideas, were key players in grandfather clock development.

The economic attraction was the number of potential employees involved. To make a clock required a classic division of labour. You needed a specialist woodworker to fashion the hood, trunk and base – coffin-makers saw the chance to employ their skills here. Dr Firth has one of their early efforts from about 1670 – it's fairly crudely fashioned with an adze and the sides are not square.

Also required in making the product was a dial maker, a movement maker, someone to provide the gut for the suspended weight, locksmiths and finishers. The clockmaker, whose name was engraved or painted on the dial, was the man who co-ordinated all this and was the instigator of ideas and business plans.

A typical Yorkshire longcase clock of the 1770s, such as those made by Ewbank of Elland, has a tall and elegant case usually made of oak, standing on a rectangular base. The hood houses a 12-inch painted dial. These were cheaper and more fashionable than simple brass and easier to read. But the glory of this business was in the flowering of local ingenuity and tastes. "There's no standard clock, everyone had their own quirkiness. That's part of the beauty. In 1770, you had the advent of the white dial which could be painted on. Whitby makers might do a picture of a boat."

Thomas Lister, from Luddenden, whose clockmaking dynasty began in the 1760s, was in demand for the smiling moon engraved on his dials. Roberts of Otley was renowned for dials engraved with charming images of rural scenes.

In an early form of diversification, enterprising farmers saw clocks as a way to supplement agricultural earnings. William Snow of Padside, near Pateley Bridge, was one such in the 1780s. Many of the men were Quakers, like Thomas Ogden of Ripponden, who made a clock with a dial which said "wind me on Mondays" (Sundays were strictly for worship). David Firth is proud of the Quaker connection. "At the time, they could not go into the established professions, they were barred from medicine or law. Quakers took their skills into other things and they did well because they were honest traders."

His phone rings. It's an inquiry from someone who has seen the exhibition at York and wants to know if he can help with information about the Barracloughs, one-time grandfather clockmakers of Haworth. David promises to call back.

"Everyone loves them. They say, 'I remember we had one in our house' and you discover it's 250 years old and had no attention. I'm trying to get them to look after them a bit better. They will go up in value. Often the hands are damaged, or the case is damaged at the bottom.

"They've often stood on stone floors that have been washed every day. That's why
a lot haven't survived. They were put
on bonfires because anything with woodworm in it used to go that way.

"A grandfather clock in 1751 cost two pounds two shillings.

"They were very commonplace by 1810 but the introduction of the spring-driven American wall clock eventually spelt the end. They were cheaper and smaller.

"It was like Ikea killing off the demand for dark furniture.

"Yorkshire clockmaking mainly died out in the 1860s." That did not mean the skills died too.

The late Melvyn Kaye, a cabinet and furniture maker from Huddersfield, whose job was veneering dashboards for Daimlers for a living, made the Millennium Clock for the British Horological Institute.

David seems to have picked up the practical side as he went along. "It's a hobby you can take up and put down. I took woodwork and metalwork at school – I like doing the woodwork best. I'm not an artist, the best I can do is try to reproduce something exactly as it was." The social history aspect of the clocks is being expanded in a book he is just finishing, Yorkshire Clocks and Their Makers.

Some of the family details came from an exhibition he held at Harewood House more than 10 years ago. "I don't think the main agents in England describe clocks correctly. I tell the individual story of each clock in my book. They may have been owned by more than one person, so there should be more details around – who was living with whom, who won the racing yesterday – that kind of thing.

"I've kept every letter and piece of information following the Harewood House exhibition in 1986. I was a very busy doctor then. I've got more time to spend now." He resists being prompted about his other interests. But the badge and blazer he's wearing invites questions.

The YPC badge turns out to be the Yorkshire Punting Club, membership about 10, of which he is founder (the river is a few yards from his back door). "We take the punt out on the river with an old-fashioned gramophone and picnic. And we have races."

Sports-talk leads in a roundabout way to cricket and the fact he once bowled Geoff Boycott when he was on 98. This was in 1977 when the great man was in his pomp. The summer had been a poor one, with many first-class games cancelled, and Yorkshire needed match pratice.
The best players from the Wetherby League were recruited to play the
full Yorkshire side and Boycott was
denied a century by a slow left-arm delivery from David.

He fishes out an old framed scorecard with half the glass front missing to prove it. His figures that day show two
wickets for 85. "Boycott had told the rest of the team at the start of the match to take it seriously. They were taking the mickey out of him in the showers afterwards."

A couple of framed letters from Leeds United signed by Raich Carter also invite inspection. In one of them, the then United manager is inviting young David down to Elland Road for a game "on any Saturday". Dr Firth says he preferred to go back to Leeds University to study medicine and play hockey for the county.

He's a member of a couple of golf clubs, plays squash and loves going to live music gigs. His main interest is an expensive one for some people. In recent times on the Isle of Man, a grandfather clock made by Daniel Quare (also a Quaker and the Master of the Clockmakers Company in 1708) was sold for £320,000. Top class ones usually fetch between £120,000 and £200,000.

Dr Firth's focus is on making his unique collection accessible. "I'm trying to create a centre for the British longcase clock. There isn't another in the world where you can see the range across the whole country. About 50-60 are on show at the British Horological Institute – but it's not open the public."

He is encouraging visitors to the York exhibition to leave their comments and inquiries. "There is still a lot to be learned, something to find."

According to the story, two brothers named Jenkins from Piercebridge in County Durham owned a grandfather clock made by James Thompson. When one brother died, the clock began to lose time. It stopped altogether when the second brother died at the age of 90. In 1876 this story inspired the song My Grandfather's Clock.

A young colleague on our staff says that her grandfather also owned one of these clocks. It too stopped when he did.

David Firth's grandfather clock exhibition is at the Red House Antiques centre, next to York Theatre Royal.