Watchmaker, master woodworker, and an unhurried listener. Built grandfather clocks by day, fixed bicycles for neighborhood children by evening.
Robert Edward Carter was born on a gusty October morning in 1948 in Exeter, Devon — the younger son of Arthur, a railway signalman, and Margaret, who tended schoolhouse hearths. From the time he could toddle across the kitchen flagstones, Bob was possessed by what his brother David called “an incurable mechanical stubbornness.”
Where other boys chased footballs across the common, Robert collected discarded clock springs, bicycle bearings, and broken umbrella ribs. By age twelve, he had dismantled his father’s pocket watch four separate times — not out of mischief, but because he was convinced he could make the ticking “a hair softer.”
“If something doesn’t run true, don’t curse the metal. Metal only remembers the pressure someone put into it. Give it patience and heat, and it will settle.”
In the autumn of 1968, nineteen-year-old Robert packed a cardboard suitcase and boarded a steam train for London. He had secured a coveted horological apprenticeship in the historic clockmaking quarter of Clerkenwell. For five years, under the exacting eye of master horologist George Davies, Bob learned to turn brass pinions on a foot-treadle lathe and balance hairsprings thin as horsehair.
It was during a rainy winter lunch at a tea stall on Rosebery Avenue that he spilled sugar into the saucer of a young mathematics student named Meena Patel. She corrected his grammar; he offered to mend the clasp on her leather handbag. They married in the summer of 1974 at St. Jude’s Parish, surrounded by wild heather and twenty-two members of Meena’s family who immediately adopted the shy Devon boy into their vibrant Sunday curries.
In 1983, Robert returned home to Devon and opened Carter Clocks & Woodworking on the High Street. Over thirty-four years, that narrow workshop became an unofficial town sanctuary. The brass bell over the door chimed constantly — not just for grandfather clocks needing repair, but for neighbours carrying broken lawnmowers, schoolgirls with jammed violin pegs, and old friends needing an unhurried listener.
Taped with yellowing masking tape to his workbench were four guidelines he taught every apprentice:
You can explore original photographs and workshop recordings in Robert's Life Gallery, including his beloved 1974 Morris Minor engine.
When Robert retired in the spring of 2018, he handed his workshop keys to his senior apprentice Sarah Jenkins, keeping only a pocket set of whittling knives and an oilstone. He turned his attention to the garden behind his stone cottage on the rim of Dartmoor National Park.
He spent his final years cultivating heirloom heritage roses — particularly Rosa mundi and sweetbriar — and teaching his granddaughter Anita how to identify every native songbird of Devon by its morning trill. He died peacefully at home on a bright April afternoon in 2024, surrounded by family, with his beloved garden roses visible through the bedroom window.
Still made two cups of tea this morning by habit. The kitchen is far too quiet without you tapping your spoon against the saucer. Thank you for fifty years of gentleness, my darling Bob. The garden roses are just opening for you.
Lighting a candle for you little brother. God knows we fought like cats when we were lads over bicycle wrenches and fishhooks, but there was never a better man on this earth. Give Mum a kiss from me. Save me a seat by the river.
Grandpa, I found that wooden robin you carved for me in 2004 tucked inside my jewelry box yesterday. I sat on the floor and cried until I was laughing thinking about you yelling at the crows for stealing your tomato seedlings. You taught me...
Left a half pint of bitter on the corner table where Bob used to sit every third Thursday. Sixty years of arguing about cricket, carburetor timing, and why Devon cider beats Somerset every day of the week. Miss you terribly mate. The moors ...
When my late husband Arthur had his stroke in 2011, Robert came over every single Tuesday at 7am to take our rubbish bins down the long gravel drive so I wouldn't have to struggle. He did it for four years straight and never once mentioned ...
Lighting a candle for the master who taught me how to work with my hands and my heart. 'Measure three times, cut once, and forgive the wood when it moves on you.' I still hear your voice every morning when I open the workshop shutters, Bob.
Born on an October morning, the younger of two brothers raised on the edge of the wild Devon moors.
Moved to Clerkenwell to study under master clockmakers, learning to turn brass pinions and balance delicate hairsprings.
Married Meena surrounded by wildflower confetti. They bought a small stone cottage near Dartmoor and began fifty years together.
It was Christmas Day 1984. Mum had taken the turkey out of the oven, the table was set for twelve people, paper crowns were on our heads... and Dad was nowhere to be found. We went down the lane in our slippers and found him squeezed behind poor eighty-year-o...
My second week at the workshop I was terrified of him. Not because he was harsh — quite the opposite, his quietness felt massive. I was working on an 1820s English fusee bracket clock, slipped with my tweezers, and snapped a mainspring with a sound like a pist...
For my tenth birthday I asked him for a Game Boy. I was a silly kid, completely obsessed with screens. On my birthday he handed me an old shoebox wrapped in brown parcel paper and butcher's twine. Inside was a complete 32-piece chess set he'd whittled by hand...
The night before we married at St. Jude's in Oxford, the old church organist took ill and there was no one to play the wedding march. I was in tears in my room. Robert showed up at my window at midnight on a borrowed bicycle with a portable cassette player he'...