Clocks, bottles, gates and bibles - Echo Memories' postbag has, as always, been bulging "Behold this hand Observe the motion's tip Man's precious hours Away like these do slip" IT is a warning to us all, but before we get on to that there is just about time to have a quick tour around the region which has, to employ an unimaginative pun, gone potty over Potts clocks.

A month ago, Echo Memories featured the work of the clockmaker William Potts to whom there is a memorial clock in a tower in Darlington's South Park.

Potts learned his trade in the early 1830s in Mechanics Yard off High Row. His firm, now based in Leeds, is still going strong, maintaining many ofthe 1,300 clocks that previous generations of Potts have installed.

From Staindrop writes Alan Davies about the Potts clock in St Mary's Church there. It was installed in 1896 by parishoners to celebrate the work of Canon Henry Lipscomb who had been their vicar for 50 years.

It is said to be a Cambridge quarter clock with 15in main wheels - which would be pretty meaningless except that it is supposed to be the second largest of its type ever made by Potts.

At 7pm on October 31, 1996, the St Mary's clock was converted to an electrical auto-wind system.

"On the basis that the clock had been wound continuously since 1896 by volunteers, the chime train drum has had to be rotated 2,700,000 times, the timing train drum 800,000 and the hourly bell drum 400,000 times, " says Mr Davies. "With 53 steps up to the clock chamber and three visits each week, 1,637,000 steps would have been taken - and if they'd all been taken one after another, that person would by now be 155 miles into space!"

From Crook comes news of the Church of Our Lady Immaculate and St Cuthbert which was built in 1854 and so, with a historical booklet by Celia Hetherington, is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year.

The original plans were drawn up by the celebrated Catholic architect Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812-52) shortly before he died of exhaustion. Pugin is regarded as the most important of 19th Century architects. He is credited with starting the Gothic revival in architecture - a style that dominates so many North-East towns as it coincided with their populations exploding in late-Victorian times.

Yet the poor people of Crook couldn't afford a tower as Pugin had intended. They had to wait for 1897, Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, for their debts to be paid off. Then they started fundraising with a vengeance, holding four-day bazaars at which "adults and children were REQUIRED to attend".

The tower cost £1,269 to build - although its pinnacles have since been replaced by fibreglass replicas because they became so dangerous - and the peal of eight bronze bells cost £390, while a Potts clock cost £202 10s.

From Sadberge comes gossip - nothing more than that at this stage - that their Potts clock, installed in 1924, is one of a pair with the other one being in the Kremlin in Russia. Research continues on this one.

And from Stanhope comes word from Mrs S Foster, churchwarden at St Thomas', that their Potts clock is approaching its 100th anniversary as it was set going during morning service on August 19, 1894.

WILLIAM Potts learned his trade from Samuel Thompson who had learned his trade from his father, James Thompson.

James died in 1825. It was James who, reputedly, made the grandfather clock for The George Hotel in Piercebridge. According to the rhyme, it stopped, short, never to go again when an old man died.

There are only a dozen of James' longcase clocks known to survive, and so Echo Memories was quite excited to learn that one of them is still in the west end of Darlington. It's dial is completed by a delicate painting of some pink flowers.

More exciting was that this Thompson longcase lives in the same house as an "Ogden of Darlington" longcase.

John Ogden was born in 1665 in Halifax, but moved into Wensleydale, to Bainbridge, in the late 1680s. He was a Quaker, and as Quakers didn't like the expansive spandrels that filled the corners of many longcase clocks, John turned to poetry. It was he who wrote the words above - one line for each corner.

Around 1712, he moved into Darlington where his faces became more decorated as he appealed to the more sophisticated urban market. His clock cases, though, remained simple - even crude - in oak or pine.

The Ogden that survives in Darlington is believed to be from late in his career. He died in 1741.

If you have anything to add to any of the items on this page - particularly if your church has a Potts clock - please write to Echo Memories, The Northern Echo, Priestgate, Darlington DL1 1NF or phone 01325505062 or e-mail chris. lloyd@nne. co. uk

Published: 09/06/2004

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