The Clockmaker of Amen Corner
This is one of our Teesdale Tales, a true story shaped by the people and places of Barnard Castle. It echoes through time, recalling a humble workshop, a striking clock, and a little-known craftsman whose name once marked the town’s centre.
There was once a narrow corner in Barnard Castle known as Amen Corner, a little yard where the walls leaned close together and the sound of boots on cobbles seemed to stay in the air. In that corner stood a small workshop with a wooden sign above the door that read Humphreys Clockmaker. Inside worked Thomas Humphreys, a quiet man with skilful hands and a careful eye, known throughout the town for the way he could bring any timepiece back to life.
His workshop was a place of soft light and tiny sounds. Brass wheels glinted on the bench. Tools lay in neat rows. Longcase clocks stood against the wall with their polished faces waiting for him to wake their ticking hearts. People in the town trusted him. Travellers dropped off pocket watches after long journeys. Families saved for years to buy one of his tall clocks. Shopkeepers in the Market Place set their days by the steady beat of his work.
One day in the year eighteen thirty eight a stranger arrived in Barnard Castle. He was already becoming well known across the country although those around him did not yet realise how famous he would become. He had been visiting the town to gather ideas and impressions for his writing. Wandering through the Market Place he stepped into Amen Corner and paused before the little shop. The tall lacquered clock inside caught his attention at once. The visitor entered, listened to the deep ticking and admired the workmanship. The name above the door stayed in his mind. The visitor was Charles Dickens and later that name found its way into one of his stories known as Master Humphreys Clock.
Life in the workshop continued with the same gentle rhythm. Thomas worked patiently at his bench, shaping tiny parts and adjusting the weights that kept the longcase clocks steady. His eldest son William learned the trade so quickly that he built his own tall clock while still a teenager. Another son, Thomas Gibson Humphreys, trained beside his father and later helped run the business. People spoke proudly of the family craft, saying the Humphreys clocks were the finest in the district.
As the years passed, Thomas felt the need for a roomier place to work. Amen Corner was cramped and dark and the little shop could only hold so many clocks at once. So the family moved the business to a new address at number nine Market Place. It stood in a brighter position where more people could see their work. The move did not change the craft itself. The steady ticking continued and the workshop became a familiar part of the towns daily life.
Time brings change even to clockmakers. Thomas Gibson Humphreys died young, leaving behind his wife and children. It was his daughter in law who stepped forward to keep the workshop alive. In the eighteen seventy one census she is listed simply as watchmaker, the fourth and final member of the family to carry the trade. She moved the business a little nearer to Newgate and ran it with quiet determination until her death in eighteen ninety one. With her passing, an unbroken line of Humphreys clockmakers stretching back to the days of George the Third came to its end.
Barnard Castle was changing too. Streets once walked by horses and carts were growing busier each year. Amen Corner, once full of small workshops and lives lived close together, was falling behind the times. By the early nineteen thirties the buildings had grown old and worn and the council planned to widen the road near Newgate. A compulsory purchase order was made and the entire row, including the old clockmakers first shop, was demolished in nineteen thirty three and nineteen thirty four. The narrow passageway vanished and only memories remained of the little yard that once echoed with the sound of ticking clocks.
Today there is no doorway in Amen Corner to tell you where Thomas once worked. The little shop was lost when the corner was cleared and nothing of that building remains. Yet the clockmaker has not been forgotten. A heritage trail plaque now marks the site, a quiet reminder of the man whose craft once kept the town on time. Another plaque stands at number nine Market Place where the family later moved their workshop.
When you stand near that spot and look towards Newgate you are close to where his story began. If you picture a small workshop with a warm window and a clock face shining in the light you can almost hear the faint echo of his craft. And somewhere in the turning of those imagined gears is the moment when a young writer stepped inside and found a name that stayed with him for the rest of his life.
Thomas Humphreys may not have been a rich man but he was respected. His work shaped the hours of Barnard Castle and his family kept the craft alive for more than seventy years. Even though the old Amen Corner shop has disappeared from the map, the story of the clockmaker remains part of the gentle heartbeat of the dale.
An illustrated impression of Amen Corner as it once looked before the buildings were cleared in the nineteen thirties. Only memories and a few old photographs remain of this quiet corner of Barnard Castle.
Part of our Discover Teesdale collection. Explore the dale’s walks, waterfalls, history and the stories of the people who shaped this place.
This tale is drawn from real events in Barnard Castle. Though the clockmaker’s first workshop has vanished from Amen Corner, the memory of his craft and the mark he left on the town continue to live on in Teesdale.
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