Meet the clockmakers making time on a former colliery site

Sinclair Harding, originally set up in 1967 by William Sinclair and Mike Harding, became a well-respected name in the business for making bespoke mechanical clocks for clients all over the world. By the mid-90s, though, the business was up for sale. It was Bob’s uncle, Brian Kitson, a fellow engineer and clock enthusiast, who introduced him to Harding. The company was a week away from closing, had no orders and no workforce. Bob had a family to support and no knowledge of clock making, but decided to take the plunge and take over the company. As an engineer he understood the mechanics behind a clock which he likens to “a gearbox that works backwards.”

His first order was for a clock for the Oval cricket ground, above the members’ entrance. However, all he had to go on by way of a brief was a watercolour sketch of a cricket scene from the late 19th century. “I asked for details about the dimensions and was told to ‘do whatever you want.’ So I’d gone from having to make small gearboxes to a two-and-a-half metre square clock with an autometer in six months.”

He designed and built the clock and met the deadline just in time for its unveiling at a NatWest semi-final match in front of the TV cameras in the summer of 1996. “I finished it on the Friday night and then it was loaded onto a wagon because there was no time for testing, and it was taken down to the Oval, put up on the wall, covered up, and it needed to work two weeks later.”

Thankfully the unveiling went without a hitch, though Bob admits he was so nervous he couldn’t watch and stayed in another room. “It had a bell on it and I heard it go and I let out a huge sigh of relief.”

If that was something of a baptism of fire, the business has grown steadily since. After eight months working in Cheltenham, Bob moved the business to a small premises in the West Yorkshire village of Clayton West in 1996. Then, 16 years later, they moved to the site of the former Emley Moor Colliery, which remains their home today.

The mechanical intricacies of clockmaking may seem a world away from the grime and graft of a colliery, but both require skilled precision, and while coal mining may have disappeared from these parts, captured for posterity in old photos like those adorning the walls of Sinclair Harding’s smart reception, the fact that this site is now home to a flourishing family clockmaking business shows that we can and do still make things in this country – and make them very well.

Since taking over the company nearly 30 years ago, Bob and his team have produced more than 1,000 clocks – from skeleton clocks and carriage clocks to chronometers and special one-off commissions. From the beginning he set his stall out for the business to be capable of making every part for each clock, which has been the case since 2017. “One of the things we’re very proud of is we manufacture everything here, from the wooden cabinets to the springs, chain making and plating,” he says. Today, Sinclair Harding makes around 40 to 50 clocks a year depending on the size of the projects. The UK was once home to a flourishing clockmaking industry though it’s now on the Red List of Endangered Crafts, drawn up by the Heritage Crafts Association (HCA), which is why Bob is proud to be flying the flag for British clockmakers around the world.

None of this he’s been able to do on his own, of course. The business employs nine people and is very much a family affair with his wife Caron, the company secretary, two sons, Dom and Stuart, brother Adrian, the main clockmaker, daughter Georgie, business development manager, son-in-law Ben, engineer, polisher and base maker, and nephew Jack, production engineer, all involved. Bob didn’t set out to create a family business, it’s just evolved that way. He still does most of the initial design work liaising closely with his son Stuart, the design and production manager. “My job is to help on the production and planning side right through to the assembly,” says Stuart. He’s been with the family firm since he was 18 and has a background in mechanical engineering. He’s proud of the work they produce. “I was in New York [with his girlfriend at the time] and we came to a jewellery shop on Fifth Avenue and I said, ‘I bet there’s one of our clocks in here.’ And I saw it straight away in the front window. I’d made parts for it. So it was quite nice seeing it out in public like that.”

Bob’s eldest son, Dom, is the quality control manager, which in a small team involves everything from programming to polishing. “Basically if anybody needs any help that’s where I come in,” he says. “We’re a group of engineers who make clocks, that’s how I see us.” He’s been here for 25 years and says the business has changed dramatically. “When I first started we had a little green lathe that we did the turning on and a little old milling machine and over the years we’ve invested in a lot of CNC [computer controlled] machinery.”

This perhaps goes against the common perception of a clockmaker. “When I tell people I make clocks I’m sure a lot of them think I just work in a shed,” says Bob. The truth is very different, with an array of high-tech equipment enabling them to create bespoke, hand finished clocks of all shapes and sizes from scratch. Some of the most complex clocks have more than 2,000 different parts and require both the design and manufacturing skills to bring them to life.

They achieve this through a combination of cutting edge technology and tried and tested techniques. “We’re probably one of, if not the only, clockmakers in the world using traditional chains. We feel like we’re keeping a lot of these skills, like bell making, alive,” says Bob.

Sinclair Harding supplies to high end retailers both in the UK and around the world including the likes of Hamburg-based Wempe Jewelers and The Hour Glass in the Far East, and have also made pieces for Middle Eastern royalty. Their clocks usually cost between £10,000 and £60,000 (though they do special pieces that cost six figure sums). But they aren’t only for the super-rich. “We have some customers who are really wealthy and others that aren’t necessarily, but who really appreciate what you’ve done. They’ve saved their money because it’s something that’s really special for them,” explains Bob. They run tours where groups can come and have a look around and he would like to do more business with retailers in the North of England. “We’d like people to come and see what we do. We don’t mind spending an hour showing people what we do.” His job as a clockmaker has taken him all over the world and he’s pleased that his family business is at the vanguard of quality British manufacturing. “When I took over, the clockmaking business in this country was almost dead. A lot of the English brands had gone by the wayside but quite a few have now been resurrected.”

So could we be seeing a renaissance in horology? “I think people increasingly appreciate the mechanics of how a clock works as well as the sound and how it looks,” says Bob. “A clock can really bring a room to life and it’s something for you to enjoy.”