About Andrew Roan of TimeScape
Hello and a very warm welcome to my website that I sincerely hope will impart my absolute passion for a job I have enjoyed doing since my qualifying in December 1983; this following my initial training with a seasoned traditional clockmaker and my then gaining my B.H.I. (British Horological Institute) qualification in horology. I am Andrew and I am the resident horologist at TimeScape and am grateful for your visiting my website.
I guess the starting point was as a young child of five or six I was in a school play at primary school and I was the 'grandfather' clock. I remember the lines as if yesterday. Tick Tock I’m a Clock everyone’s asleep but me and repeated several times over!
Another push in the direction I now follow is my dear late grandmother who gave me an old watch with a blue enamel surround ‘that couldn’t be repaired’ so I opened the back and with a pin from my late mothers sewing box I gave the balance wheel a push and off it went and never stopped..... I was hooked !
My training initially started In Gloucestershire with a really lovely gentleman called Maurice Artus a time served and absolutely traditional clockmaker who qualified in 1950. His remit was to look after the clock in Gloucester cathedral, the Gloucester city and folk museum clocks along with the automaton clock to be found outside and above G.A.Baker & Son in Southgate Street again in Gloucester, not to mention many more public clocks and collections.
I spent 24 months under his guidance learning traditional skills including correct use of cutting files and broaches, re-bushing and re-pivoting, wheel and pinion cutting and how to let the power down on a fusee clock without losing one’s fingers! I still have and use hand tools that Maurice left to me when he passed 'into the great bell chamber in the sky' and they are still as good today as when they were made and some from the 18th & 19th centuries. Traditional tools used in traditional repairs indeed.
The machinery used was invariably hand turned or treadle powered and only occasionally was electricity employed to turn things or polish items.
On leaving Maurice, I entered said B.H.I. residential course at a college in Berkshire under the watchful eye of tutor Alec Price F.B.H.I. and here I honed my skills and learnt the more salient points of horology and associated theories.
I graduated in 1983 and went to world renowned clockmakers Sinclair-Harding in Cheltenham before then moving to Thomas Mercer, Chronometers also in Cheltenham.
On leaving Mercer’s I started my own business in the antique centre in Gloucester Docks and then moved to my own dedicated workshop where I have been fortunate enough to work on exquisite items by makers from the 'Golden Age' of clockmaking such as Thomas Tompion, Daniel Quare, Joseph Knibb, George Graham and more recent makers such as E.J Dent, Faberge ( Henry Moser ), James Condliff and very many more notable makers. Also undertaken on a regular basis is the care of collections of Royalty, many notable celebrities and private individuals throughout the whole of the U.K.
As a personal accolade on 21st March 2018 I was awarded the honour of being bestowed with my being made a Freeman of The City Of London. This along such great names such as Lord Nelson, Duke of Wellington, Florence Nightingale, Sir Terry Wogan, Nelson Mandella and many more. A great honour indeed.
