Stop! Why you should not turn back that clock

The ticking of 50 or so clocks almost creates a hum as you walk through Timepiece Antique Clocks, an antique clock shop on Patrick Street in Dublin 8.

“This time of year I get a lot of phone calls from people who have forgotten that they’re not supposed to turn the hands of their clock backwards,” says Kevin Chellar, horologist and owner of the shop.

“All you have to do is stop your clock for an hour and start it off again. In springtime going forward you just set the hands one hour, it’s really easy. But setting the hands backwards is a no-no because there are levers that are lifted in a clockwise action, and if they go backwards you are bending and twisting them.”

Tonight, Irish people will get an extra hour in bed, when clocks will go back one hour as Daylight Savings Time ends.

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Chellar got involved in horology at the age of 18 or 19, when he completed a three-year course at an institute set up by the Swiss Watchmakers Federation and the Vocational Education Committee (VEC). Such an institute no longer exists.

“This is obviously a marginal business. In the city centre it’s the only ‘Clock Shop’, though there are other businesses that ‘do clocks’. So people come through the door and they are blown away by what they see because they’ve just never seen it before.

The horologist frequently has to respond to some unusual difficulties. While The Irish Times was in the store a customer came in with a clock that had mysteriously stopped. Within a few minutes Chellar had solved the problem – a spider had got into the mechanism.

While awaiting the repair, the man looked around and said: “It’s like Aladdin’s cave here.”

There are not very many horologists still in business in Ireland today. Chellar mentions some others, in Cork, Roscommon, Loughrea and Ballina.

The shop benefits from its central location, with tourists dropping in. “There’s a box over there going to North Carolina. This year we’ve sent boxes to Seattle, Taipei, Bucharest, and places like that, so all around the world. Because we are positioned between the two cathedrals, there are always people going up and down here.”

But the business also holds an appeal for the locals, as they sell authentic Dublin grandfather clocks. “Here we would sell Dublin grandfather clocks that are not much bigger than ourselves, and they fit into everybody’s home, they’re 6ft and a bit. There are those of us who are interested in the aesthetic and the idea of the grandfather clock, that perhaps is made in the town and has a bit of history to it. ”

Chellar believes that a well-minded clock can become its own piece of history.

“Some people see a clock that’s 150 years old and ask, ‘Is it nearly finished? Is it worn out?’ and I say ‘No, that’s its first 150 years!’ If you keep that maintained in a decent, dry atmosphere, in your home and look after it, generations and generations later there won’t be much change in its condition.”

The annual speculation about the need for changing the clocks doesn’t phase him.

“Does it really affect me? It’s only really affected me on a few occasions when I myself have forgotten to turn back the clocks. I showed up an hour late to a show once, the clockman had missed a beat!”