On a bright Saturday in September, in a clockmaker’s workshop surrounded by farmland in the western Irish county of Clare, three curious students bent over workbenches covered with clock parts. For the first time, they were trying out some of the clockmaker’s tools: pliers, tweezers, hammers, hand vises, tongs and more. A turf fire warmed the room.
It was the first day of a weekend course on antique clock repair, taught by Nigel Barnes, a fifth-generation horologist who has been offering the classes since 2008, introducing people to clock making and having them undertake some rudimentary repairs. (In 2008 Mr. Barnes and his wife, Pepie O’Sullivan, an antique furniture restorer and upholsterer, also started offering furniture restoration and chair-making courses through their business, Oldchairs.)
Just after 9 a.m. this particular day, Mr. Barnes, 75, began the session with a brief introduction to time itself: “It’s necessary. You’ve got to know the background to understand clocks.” He talked about various civilizations and their philosophies of time, including the ancient Egyptians, who had 12-hour days and 12-hour nights.
Next, pointing at one of the clocks on his desk, he moved on to discussing a clock’s parts: “One of the ground rules is when you take this clock apart, there is no part in this clock that is called ‘thing,’” he said with a laugh. “So, you learn the words. If you don’t know what it’s called, ask.”
Then, at about 10:30 a.m., he set the students to work.
On one side of the room, at a deep window seat that had been turned into a workbench, was Seán Martin, 75, from Salthill, a suburb of Galway about 40 miles north. He was examining the parts of a wall clock made in the 1870s by the New Haven Clock Company of Connecticut — a mass-produced piece that Mr. Barnes said would have been a status symbol in rural Ireland at the time.
“I’ve taken the housing apart. Basically, there’s nine wheels in it and I’ve put most of them back together again,” he said, proudly. “I’ve looked at faults on that old system where there was wear and tried to work on repairing that wear.”
Mr. Martin said it was his first attempt to repair a clock, although he said his work experience in a laboratory at the University Hospital Galway had given him what he called a “steady hand and precision.” He wanted to practice on an old timepiece before bringing in his own grandfather clock, which the Irish call a long case clock.
He wasn’t sure about the clock’s make or age; his brother-in-law had bought it and given it to him. But it didn’t work, so he was taking the class in hopes of doing the repairs himself.
“It cost about 500 euros,” he said of the clock. “That’s cheap if it works — but if it doesn’t work, it’s expensive!”
The Cuckoo
Across the room, at another window seat workbench, was Ruth Hollingsworth, from Liscannor, a town about 21 miles north.
Ms. Hollingsworth, who works in sales for a software company in Galway, was dismantling her paternal grandmother’s cuckoo clock, which also wasn’t working. Her husband, who preferred not to be named, was the third student, sitting nearby and studying an Enfield Clock Company timepiece made in Britain in the early 1930s.
Ms. Hollingsworth, 45, had heard of the course from a friend who attended last year and had recommended it. “My husband’s always been fascinated by the inner workings of clocks, so I booked it for his birthday, and I thought, ‘Do you know what? I’ll come along myself’,” she said. (The course fee was 215 euros ($240), and included lunches and tea or coffee during breaks.)
As for the cuckoo clock, “It was my gran’s, a cheapo thing she bought on holiday in Germany,” she said. “It was on the wall of her lounge when I was growing up and loved when the cuckoo came out.”
When her grandmother died in 2014, Ms. Hollingsworth said, she was delighted to get the clock. But it was in bad shape.
“I took it to this fella that mends clocks in Ennis and he got it working,” she said, referring to a nearby town. “He phoned me and played the cuckoo down the phone and I just had tears running down my face! I hadn’t heard it since I was 10 or 11. Now it’s in our house, but it’s not been working for the last year or so.”
Mr. Barnes had shown Ms. Hollingsworth how to open the case, photograph the intact mechanism and then take it all apart. Now, looking at all the components laid out on the desk, she shook her head, perplexed.
“I’m never going to be able to fix it,” she said, admitting that she already had directed several expletives at the timepiece. “I don’t know what’s going on here! I’ve already been very frustrated! I don’t have patience!”
Mr. Barnes suggested taking a breath. “No pressure!” he said, coming to help.
“The challenge is unraveling what has happened over the lifetime of the clock,” he had said earlier. “A bit like when the doctor has 10 cases of flu in the waiting room. They all look the same, but everyone has a different history.”
In the case of the cuckoo clock, it was cigarette smoke. There was no major mechanical damage, Mr. Barnes said, but the parts were covered in tar that had trapped dust.
“My nan used to smoke 20 a day for most of her 95 years, so it was just covered in filth,” Ms. Hollingsworth said.
Amused by Mr. Barnes’s diagnosis, her mood lightened as she began working on the parts. She dipped a paintbrush into a bowl filled with lighter fluid and then applied the liquid to each piece. They eventually gleamed gold while the untouched parts remained black.
“And that cuckoo’s got asthma,” Mr. Barnes said, playing with the two accordionlike bellows that create the cuckoo call: The one for the “cuck” was fine, but the higher-pitched one, for the “oo,” had a tear in the paper well beyond repair. “Horological suppliers have them,” Mr. Barnes said. “I’ll put one on my order next week.”
In the Family
The students chatted about their clocks over a lunch of homemade vegetable soup, with salads, cheeses and charcuterie prepared by Ms. O’Sullivan, 75.
Mr. Barnes said he regularly sets out to offer 12 courses a year, but usually ends up teaching 17 or 18 to meet the demand. Though these three students were newcomers, he noted that he often has returnees (Mr. Martin already was considering taking another course).
“Horology is in my genes,” Mr. Barnes said. “My grandfather on my mother’s side was a clockmaker from the Black Forest, and his grandfather was a clockmaker.”
In the English fishing village of Porthleven, Cornwall, where Mr. Barnes was raised, his mother, Joan Zipfel, did repairs, having learned the skills from her father. “She took in the neighbors’ clocks, cleaned and oiled them, and sorted a few problems,” he said.
Horology was a part of his father’s family, too. Hugh Barnes, whom the family called Jim and was a younger brother of Mr. Barnes’s father, also was a clockmaker.
Mr. Barnes had expected to follow his uncle into the trade, but his exam results were good enough for him to study mining engineering from 1967 to 1971 at the Camborne School of Mines in Penryn, Cornwall. “I’m a natural engineer,” he said. “I knew that I was born with hands. But I suspect I’d have been entirely happy to go to Uncle Jim and learn the clock trade.”
After graduation, he began working in mines and quarries around the British Isles and overseas, coming to Ireland on a three-month contract in 1990. He has lived there ever since, initially working on civil engineering blasting projects, mainly for roads and tunnels.
After he sold his consultancy, Barnes & Associates, in 2003, he and Ms. O’Sullivan bought and restored Clooneenagh House, a ruin that had originally been a wine merchant’s house dating to 1660.
In addition to teaching, Mr. Barnes has also coauthored two books: “Clock Cases: A Practical Guide to their Construction, Restoration and Conservation” with Karoliina Ilmonen in 2015, and “Maintaining Longcase Clocks, An Owner’s Guide to Maintenance, Restoration and Conservation,” with Austin Jordan in 2013.
Mr. Jordan, 52, another fifth-generation horologist, operates Clock Jordan, a restoration business in the eastern Irish county of Kildare. He met Mr. Barnes when he took one of the couple’s furniture restoration courses about 15 years ago and has returned several times. “When you do a course with Nigel you come away feeling enthusiastic about everything,” he said. “He is very, very inspiring, he’s a natural teacher and a natural giver.”
On Day 2
By the end of Day 2, three clocks were in working order, although the cuckoo still didn’t have its voice as it awaited new bellows.
Rather than bring in the grandfather clock, which is slightly more than five feet tall, Mr. Martin had removed the mechanism and brought it to class in a plastic shopping bag.
Mr. Barnes identified the clock as having been made in Germany, a late-19th century or early-20th century copy of an English grandfather clock. It had a quarter-chime movement, which means that, if the clock had been working, it would have chimed every 15 minutes — a challenging clock for a beginner to repair, Mr. Barnes said.
Mr. Martin agreed and went back to working on the New Haven wall clock.
“I felt there was a risk that the very complicated clock he had brought was likely to turn the weekend into a negative experience for him,” Mr. Barnes said. “He’s going to look out for cheap scrap clocks at home to get a better feel” for repair work.
Mr. Barnes said he always enjoys these weekends, even though he admitted that it was a “tall order” getting complete novices to dismantle a clock, repair it and put it back together again in just two days.
“It’s ridiculously optimistic!” he said. “But it’s surprising how many meet the challenge. I love it!”
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