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Sarah Jane Checkland with daughter Aoife at the closed shop |
Missing clock and the tragic deaths of two shop partners
Customer accepts loss of art deco timepiece after double blow forces business to shut
THE mystery of an ornate clock which went missing at a Highbury shop where both business partners died tragically within two weeks was finally solved this week.
Former Times arts writer Sarah Jane Checkland contacted the Tribune for help when she was unable to discover what happened to a clock of great sentimental value after the closure of Time in Highbury eight months ago.
Clock restorer Graham Redwood, 47, died of a heart attack in May this year following the death from cancer two weeks earlier of his business partner, James Doyle, 49.
This week, Mr Redwood’s brother, Mark Cox, told the Tribune that as far as he knew all items held at the Blackstock Road shop had been returned to their owners. Everything else had been sold at auction.
Mr Cox said the family had tried to contact up to 40 customers who had left items at the shop. “Now time has passed and the shop has been cleared and everything else has gone to auction,” he added.
“The problem was that Graham’s assets didn’t cover his liabilities. There is nothing left now.”
Ms Checkland said this week: “I accept I am not going to get my clock back now but I’ve been advised I might be able to claim compensation.”
The deaths of the partners marked the loss of two members of an increasingly rare breed – the professional clock and watch restorer.
Until last year Time in Highbury was based in Clerkenwell, one of the few firms left from the days when the area was famous for its clock and watch restorers.
The shop moved last year to new premises in Blackstock Road, close to Highbury Quadrant, following financial problems at the Clerkenwell shop.
Mr Redwood was an ex-RADA student and a contemporary of theatre and film star Kenneth Branagh.
Ms Checkland, a Highbury Park resident who was a friend of Mr Redwood, has been trying to recover a 1930s electric kitchen clock, with an art deco face, from the shop.
She said: “I was really upset when I heard about his death. He was a good man.”
Mr Redwood had been really worried about money until he found an 18th-century miniature painting, which he sold for about £36,000, she added.
Ms Checkland took her clock into the shop in February and Mr Redwood complained it would cost more to mend it than it was worth.
She added: “But then he’d always say that. I went in periodically to see how he was getting on with the clock but he still hadn’t done it. He also had a metal stand of mine that needed soldering.”
When she returned from her summer holidays, she found the shop had been cleared.
John Lloyd, who runs the Watch Service Centre (known as the Little Yellow Shop) in Clerkenwell Road, was a neighbour of the partners.
He said: “They were real craftsmen. Graham looked after the clocks and James did the watches. For them both to die within two weeks of each other was terribly sad. Graham was a single man but James had a wife and three grown-up children.”
He added: “There used to be at least 20 clock firms in this area until the 1980s. Now there are about four.” |
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