Echo Memories charts the career of a master clockmaker whose company provided the imposing timepiece that provided the finishing ornament to South Park.

Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Time was ticking away on Darlington Parks Committee's promise to build a clock in the new park. But then - quite possibly in the nick of time - in stepped the sons of probably the most famous clockmaker in the North of England, and generously offered to give the park a clock in memory of their father.

So the walkers, the joggers and the bowlers of South Park all measure their progress by the hands on the Potts Memorial Clock.

Robert was the first Potts to come to Darlington. He was born near Berwick in 1776, and in February 1793 his father paid £20 to apprentice him for six years to James Thompson, clockmaker, of High Row, Darlington.

James died in 1825, but at least 12 of his longcase clocks are known to survive - including the grand-daddy of them all, My Grandfather's Clock. It is a James Thompson clock that is reputed to have stopped short, never to go again when an old man died in The George Hotel, Piercebridge.

James made his cases out of oak and mahogany, but his doors were very unusual. Whereas most clockmakers built overlapping doors, James' fitted snugly inside a frame like a cupboard door.

While he was with James, Robert Potts learned his trade and met his wife: a local girl, Faith Garthwaite. They married and lived in Salt Yard, off Bondgate.

Their family grew until 1814 when, days after giving birth to their sixth child, Faith died.

Robert was left with an almighty handful, but fortunately he had family nearby to help. His third son, five-year-old William, went to live with an uncle who farmed at Ouston Moor, Norton.

William attended Bishopton School and then Stockton Grammar School. At the age of 12, he finished his formal education and went to Keighley, in Yorkshire. There he joined his father, who was working in a wagonworks and doing clock repairs in his spare time.

In 1830, it was decided that William should also train as a clockmaker and, for £40, he was apprenticed to Sammy Thompson, in Darlington.

Sammy was James' son, and the High Row business, with a large workshop in Mechanics Yard, was thriving.

Sammy was known as "the inventor of the illuminated dial" which, in horological terms seems to have been a big breakthrough. Sammy exported clocks to America and was moving into a specialist market, making turret clocks for churches.

William finished his apprenticeship in 1833 and moved to Pudsey, near Leeds, to start his own business. This was partly to be nearer his father and partly because the terms of his apprenticeship would have stipulated that he could not set up in Darlington, in direct competition with his master.

He thrived at Pudsey. The dawn of the Industrial Revolution was a good time to be a clockmaker, particularly one who understood turret clocks. There were communities springing up, each one needing a church, and each church requiring a spire clock. There were factories springing up, each needing a turret clock to ensure the workers were not late. And there were railways springing up, each station requiring a clock above its entrance to ensure that the passengers arrived in time, and a clock over each platform so the trains left on time.

William became the official clockmaker to three railway companies: the Great Northern, the North Eastern and the Midland. He became the unofficial clockmaker for the growing suburban sprawl of Leeds and Bradford.

Word spread farther afield. In 1859, he sent a clock to Buenos Aires, in Argentina, and in 1862 he received his first UK contract outside West Yorkshire - for St Mary's Church, Gainford.

With business growing, William moved into a bigger workshop in Guildford Street, in the centre of Leeds - where his company is to this day.

There can barely be a town in the North-East that is not been looked down upon by a Potts clock: Darlington town clock (1864), Loftus church (1870) and town hall (1880), Skelton (1883), Scarborough station (1883), Staindrop post office (1883), Northallerton church (1885) and Sunderland central station (1885), to name but a few.

In 1866, William fell "a considerable depth". He suffered leg and spine injuries, and never fully recovered. It is no coincidence that immediately afterwards he took his sons, Robert, James and Joseph, as partners. The company is still called William Potts and Sons.

At dusk on November 24, 1886, William - unstable from his accident 20 years earlier - fell down a staircase in his workshop. He gashed his head and broke his leg. Then he contracted bronchitis. He died on January 7, 1887, aged 77.

Although he had left his home town at an early age, his sons said he was always eager for news of Darlington.

When they heard that the parks committee was coming under increasing pressure to add a timepiece to the growing number of ornaments in the new South Park, the sons "spontaneously and generously" offered a chiming clock.

The chimes, though, were cordially turned down, because the best place for the clock to go was in the observation tower that formed part of the park superintendent's house. The poor fellow would not have wanted to have been binged and bonged every 15 minutes, day and night.

The superintendent's house, then occupied by James Morrison, is believed to have been built in 1853 on top of the centuries old Poor Howdens farmhouse that, as previous Echo Memories have shown, was the start of the park.

To make the clock a focal point - and it can still be seen from practically every point in the park - the council raised the observation tower by 10ft. The white bricks with terracotta facing were made by the Commondale Brick and Pipe Company, in the Cleveland Hills; the clock's dial was made with Skelton cast-iron and glazed with white opal glass.

"All of the wheels are of gunmetal, cut and polished," purred the Darlington and Stockton Times.

"All of the pinions are of best cast steel, cut and polished.

"The clock, after once being regulated, will not vary more than about five seconds per month and will not be surpassed as a timekeeper."

It was formally started at precisely 3pm on September 4, 1901, by Sir Joseph Whitwell Pease.

Well, it was supposed to be precise. On the stroke of three, Sir Joseph gave "a long pull, a strong pull, a pull altogether", on a cord hanging from the tower to start the clock. Then the speechifying began.

And then, rumbling in the distance, the town clock - another Potts clock - could be heard announcing that it was three o'clock precisely.

Sir Joseph (1828 to 1903) was the son of Joseph whose statue is on High Row. Sir Joseph, who lived at Woodlands, in Darlington, and Hutton Hall, in Guisborough, was MP for South Durham from 1865 to 1885, and for Barnard Castle from 1885 until his death, when his long service meant that he was the Father of the House.

The ceremony in South Park was one of his last official engagements in the town before his family's financial troubles set in.

They culminated in December 1902, with the crash of the family bank and the ruination of the family fortunes - a stress that hit Sir Joseph, the family head, so hard that he died within six months.

Fortunately, then, the clock ceremony was an occasion he seemed to enjoy. His memory roamed back to childhood when Sammy Thompson's shop on High Row was a source of fascination for him.

"The first watch my grandfather gave me was repaired pretty frequently there," he said.

When he finished, he was afforded three cheers. Sir Joseph then called for three cheers for the Potts family, and the proceedings were rounded off with "three for the clock"

Published: 12/05/2004

Echo Memories, The Northern Echo, Priestgate, Darlington DL1 1NF, e-mail chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk or telephone (01325) 505062.