End of an era in York, as city's famous clockmaker Geoffrey Newey dies, aged 87

Mr Newey's grandfather George started a clock-making business in York in 1882, and the company made clocks for numerous churches, York Racecourse, the Co-Operative Society and Naburn Hospital, and other buildings around the city.

Mr Newey built the distinctive clock at St Martin le Grand in Coney Street

When he was 14, Mr Newey joined the business his father Roland had started in Clifford Street in 1919. Mr Newey told The Press in 1997: "I just got my sleeves rolled up and got stuck in."

The first clock he wound was that on the roof of the Castle Museum, in 1942, and he wound it every week for more than 65 years. He also wound the Minster clock every day for many years.

Mr Newey pictured in 2007 on the Castle Museum roof, in front of the first clock he wound

At the age of 21 he was made a partner, and took over R Newey & Son in the late 1950s when his father retired, and when Roland died in 1964, he became the last in line of the Newey clockmakers, and was responsible for inspecting or winding more than 200 clocks in York every year.

His daughter Sarah Goldsmith said Mr Newey was born into the trade, and his death would be "a sad loss for the city".

Mr Newey, pictured in 1997

She said: "It's what he was born to do. Never took a sick day, never took a holiday.

"He was immensely proud. The Coney Street clock over St Martin Le Grand - he made that from scratch and served York all his life. It's the only job he ever knew."

Mr Newey was made MBE in 2003, and had also resurrected a clock for King's College Cambridge in 1989.

Speaking after he was made an MBE, Mr Newey said: "It is really flattering that someone has recognised my work and nominated me. I never ever thought it would happen to me. It really is quite splendid."

>>> Flashback: ""It was pitch black and all the windows had been blacked out. When you shone your torch you could see the rats' eyes." - Read Geoffrey Newey's memories in this 2007 interview.

He had been married to his wife Angela for 33 years until her death in 2007, and is survived by his daughter.

Mr Newey's father Roland, pictured in 1944

He had been a resident at a care home in Stamford Bridge since he fell at his Hirst Grove home in 2011 and broke his femur, and Ms Goldsmith said his health had declined in recent years.

She said: "He's been greatly deteriorating unfortunately but he was desperately trying to work for the first 18 months of being in the care home.

"He had his own little shed and even in the later stages, when he was hallucinating, his actions with his hands were still working."

Ms Goldsmith said her father was surrounded by loved ones when he died on Wednesday at the care home.

She said: "I'm so pleased he was there with friends and family when he went.

"It was actually really nice. We got a call from the home to get there, and we spent all Wednesday morning just talking sharing nice memories, laughing and joking.

"It wasn't morbid it was just lovely. The care home worker for the evening shift asked if we wanted a cup of tea and just as she brought them back, he went. We had a little toast to him. It was nice, it was how he would have wanted to go."

A memorial service will be held for Mr Newey at York Minster at 1.30pm on March 4, following his cremation at 11.40am at Bishopthorpe.

Left: The St Martin le Grand clock being installed in 1966. Right: Mr Newey beneath it in 2002. Mr Newey built the clock to replace the one damaged in the 1942 Baedeker raid on York.

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The article below was published in The Evening Press in 1997

WITH every peal, the Minster bells ring out an endorsement of a York family's craftsmanship.

Each time Coney Street shoppers check the time by the St Martin-le-Grand clock they are relying on the skill of the same family.

In fact, if the timepiece on a church or public building runs as regularly as clockwork, chances are the clockworks in question were built or repaired by one of the Neweys.

Today Geoffrey Newey's workshop is found above Russell's Cycles on Toft Green. Walking into the small room, it is as though the many clocks dotted around have conspired to create a timewarp.

The scene is one that his grandfather, GJF Newey, would certainly recognise. Many of the tools scattered on the workbench are identical to those used by Victorian clockmakers.

And the lathe is the same one Geoffrey's father bought in about 1920. It is now electric, instead of being powered by its pedal.

He wouldn't swap it. "Modern lathes, you can't do as much on them as an old lathe. They're more specialist tools. I can do all sorts on here."

As batteries replace cogs in today's clocks Mr Newey's skills are becoming rarer. They are skills handed from one generation to another.

"My great-grandfather was a gunsmith. I am told that he was one of the last handful of gunsmiths to make Brown Bessies, the musket used by the British Army.

"My great grandfather came from London and my grandfather was born in Pimlico, a true Cockney."

The family moved to York where his grandfather, whose full name was George Jabel Frederick Newey, started a clock-making business in High Petergate in 1882.

He quickly established a good reputation and made his first church clock, for the St Edward the Confessor in Dringhouses, in 1891.

Other major commissions followed, including a clock for York Racecourse, one for the Co-operative Society and another for Escrick Church.

Sid Bradley, 83, of Knaresborough, remembers GJF well. "In about 1923-24 I first saw Mr Newey's shop in High Petergate.

"I was being shown round York by my future brother-in-law George Bradford who worked at Cooke, Troughton and Simms of York.

"I saw the wall clock above the shop with its works on show in the window below.

"Later I got to know Mr Newey, who was a remarkable character.

"My sister and her fiancee bought an American organ in York. Mr Newey used to come over to our house and play the organ at which he was expert.

"Whilst he played I had to have a towel ready for him to wipe the perspiration from his neck, such was the vigour of his playing.

"Once he told me that church bells spoke to each other and that one church in York would toll: 'Who rings best? Who rings best?'

"And a second replied: 'They all say I do, I do!' To which a third tolled deeply: 'You be damned, you be damned!'"

Geoffrey Newey was born 10 months before his grandfather died in 1928. "My grandfather was one of the first people in York to have the Greenwich time signal relayed to him," he said.

"I think the impulse came over at 10 o'clock every morning. It came by landline from the post office."

He would set his main clock from this signal. "The same clock is now around the corner at the De Grey Rooms."

GJF Newey repaired the Minster clocks in 1928. "We have been involved in repairing and winding them ever since," his grandson said.

"In the 1980s, one of the last jobs I did in the old Clifford Street workshop was to take the hammers which were striking on the ringing peal and put them on the Nelson peal."

In St Nicholas's Chapel, York Minster, there is a chair dedicated to GJF Newey.

GJF and his son Roland - known to friends as Dick - worked together for many years. Among the clocks they built together are the huge ones for Hull Town Hall and Naburn Hospital.

But it was an arrangement that broke down. Geoffrey Newey explained. "My grandfather wouldn't pay wages. It was a very popular thing to do in those days.

"My father said 'I'm off'. He was getting to the stage of getting married and my grandfather wanted to pay him half a crown a week.

"Even in those days you couldn't get married on half a crown a week."

Roland Newey started up his own business on Clifford Street in 1919.

Geoffrey, a pupil at the former Model School in York, joined the firm as an apprentice aged 14.

"I just got my sleeves rolled up and got stuck in. I had it all to learn.

"But I wasn't exactly green about the job. You can't live in a family of clockmakers without learning something about it - even when you are small."

And his father was a good teacher. "He was very meticulous. There was nothing second rate with the old man. You either did it right, or you got your backside kicked."

After serving as an instrument maker in the Royal Engineers during his National Service days, Geoffrey rejoined the company in August 1948.

The following year, when he was aged 21, he was made a partner. R Newey & Son was born.

Geoffrey took over in the late 1950s when his father retired. Roland Newey died in April 1964, aged 73. So Geoffrey, married to Angela and with one daughter, is the last in the line of Newey clockmakers.

In 1966, he built a clock for St Martin-le-Grand church in Coney Street to replace the one bombed in the war. At that time he was responsible for inspecting or winding more than 200 clocks in York every year. "I used to do every church in York," he recalled. "I had a rota each day."

Now 69, Mr Newey maintains a handful, including the Minster, the Bar Convent and the first church clock to bear his name - the one at the Holy Redeemer, Acomb.

These timepieces are solidly built. The most recent repairs Mr Newey has carried out on a church clock were on the mechanism at Stillington. It was over 50 years since it had last needed restoration.

Each clock he builds or restores is different - but the approach is the same. "You have got to design the whole lot. You start scratching your head and get the back of the envelope out!"

Mr Newey is now semi-retired and so has more time on his hands. But then, he could have said the same for all his working life.