William Potts clocks have kept time all over the North-East for generations and, now, for the first time, they are chronicled in a new book. Chris Lloyd looks at the life and times of Potts Clocks.

THERE is barely a town, a village, a hamlet in the North-East that is not looked down upon by a Potts clock. Indeed, much of the country knows the face of a Potts. In fact, there are Pottses in all the world's time zones. From Moscow to Madras, from Grenada in the West Indies to Kabul in Afghanistan, they all tell the time by a Potts clock.

All of these clocks - which are chronicled for the first time in a new book - were made in Leeds by a firm started by a man from the Tees Valley.

This potted history of the Potts family begins Northumberland where, in 1776, Robert Potts was born. His parents soon moved to Ouston Moor Farm which still stands on the back road between Stockton and Sadberge, and he became apprenticed to a clockmaker on Darlington's High Row in 1793.

Robert married Faith, a lass from the village of Forcett, and they settled in Salt Yard, off Bondgate in Darlington town centre, where poor Faith rapidly popped out the children.

Her third son, William, was born three days before Christmas 1809; she died in 1814 just five days after the birth of her sixth child.

The tragedy scattered the family as various children were placed with various relatives in various places. William wound up with his uncle James at Ouston Moor, going to school first in Bishopton and then Stockton.

In 1830, he followed in his father's footsteps and became an apprentice clockmaker on High Row.

When he finished his apprenticeship, he was not allowed to set himself up in business in immediate competition with his master. So, in 1833, he started in Pudsey, near Leeds, specialising in turret clocks.

What a time to be into turret clocks! The Industrial Revolution was in full swing. There were new communities springing up all over, with factories, churches and railways all demanding turret clocks to keep the wheels of industry ticking over. By 1860, from Buenos Aires to Aldbrough St John, William's name was to be found on new clocks, and he was the horologist for every railway company in the North.

In 1864, the vicar of Gainford so liked the clock placed in the spire of St Mary's Church that he immediately ordered another one for the wall of his new school in Piercebridge.

In 1880, Loftus ordered a huge clock with three illuminated 5ft 6in dials for its new town hall which was next to the parish church in which William had placed a spire clock only a decade earlier. It is to be hoped that the well-Pottsed people of Loftus are never late.

William died in 1886, aged 77, and in 1901 the Potts Memorial Clock was started in his honour in South Park in his home town of Darlington.

By then, the firm, in the hands of his sons, was beginning to struggle. Times were a-changing. There were enough factories and stations, and when the First World War broke out, church building stopped, too. Peace brought new business in the shape of tributes to the fallen - there are Potts war memorial clocks in the institutes of Frosterley, Wearhead and Westgate - but the family was now imploding. Thomas Potts was dismissed for gross mismanagement and younger brother Charles took over.

Twenty clocks were sent to the Argentinian Railway; 100 clocks went to the Indian Railway, and one clock to the ED Walker Homes in Darlington, but in 1934 Potts were wound up and sold to rivals John Smith of Derby.

Charles operated successfully on his own for a while. During the 1930s, in the days before digital dashboards, he pioneered large roadside clocks - one stood on the A1 near Scotch Corner before being moved to the A167 at Plawsworth in the 1950s. It is now in Australia.

During the 1950s, he pioneered large floral clocks - huge hands planted with flowers which graced municipal parks in Consett and Whitby.

But when Charles died in 1958, the line of Potts clockmakers which William had started in 1833 came to a stop. The very last clock made by a Potts was installed in Shincliffe church in 1962.

The Potts name lives on in practically every town, village and hamlet in the region - and because, as a subsidiary of Smith of Derby, Potts and Sons still maintains many of the timepieces made by William and his sons in the past 175 years.

Potts of Leeds: Five Generations of Clockmakers by Michael S Potts (Mayfield Books, £45). See www.mayfieldbooks.freeserve.co.uk or call (01335) 344472.