Robert Edward Carter

Robert was born in Exeter during the autumn of 1948, the younger of two brothers raised on the edge of the Devon moors. From his earliest years, he showed an almost mechanical curiosity about the inner workings of things. While other boys were playing football in the lane, Robert could reliably be found on his knees behind his father’s shed, methodically dismantling an old bicycle hub or winding the spring of a broken mantel clock.

In 1968, he took an apprenticeship in horology in London’s Clerkenwell district. He spent five years learning how to carve balance wheels by hand under master watchmakers who measured patience in tenths of a millimeter. It was during this period, on an uncharacteristically sunny afternoon in Portobello Market, that he met Meena. They married in 1974 at St. Jude’s Church and settled in a small stone cottage near Dartmoor, where they would spend the next fifty years.

In 1983, he opened Carter Clocks & Woodworking on the high street. For over three decades, his workshop became the unofficial town square for anyone who needed a hinge repaired, a pendulum calibrated, or simply twenty minutes of quiet conversation without judgment. He retired in 2018 to tend his rose garden and teach his granddaughter Anita how to identify every native songbird of Devon.