Nicholas Smith
Leader of an illustrious Derby clockmaking firm who balanced tradition with innovation
NICHOLAS SMITH, who has died aged 82, was managing director of Smith of Derby, the turret clockmaking company founded by his great-great-grandfather. John Smith established his business in 1856 as successor to John Whitehurst, a third-generation clockmaker to whom he had been apprenticed at the same premises in Queen Street, Derby. Among the firm’s most prominent work is the turret clock of St Paul’s Cathedral, installed in 1893 – and originally designed to strike the hour on the 16-ton “Great Paul”, though fears for the fabric later forced a change to a lighter bell. The clock is maintained by Smith of Derby to this day.
Nick Smith succeeded his father Howard as managing director in 1975. The company’s historian praised his “patient and farseeing” custodianship, which combined respect for the past with a willingness to invest in innovation – including computerisation within the business itself, and the use of electronic controls and sensors attached to traditional mechanisms to ensure near-perfect timekeeping.
He enjoyed pursuing new clients at home and abroad, as well as providing the service required to keep old clocks in working condition. And he was deeply committed to maintaining the specialised skills of his craft, having created what is probably the world’s only comprehensive turret clock training centre.
Notable projects for the firm during his era included a four-dial turret clock for the Asmah mosque in Muscat; a two-dial clock atop Boeing’s international headquarters skyscraper in Chicago; and the Planisphere at the Bluewater shopping centre in Kent, which tells the position of the stars as well as the time.
John Nicholas Wilkins Smith was born in Derby on August 21 1935. His first schooling was as the only boy boarder in a girls’ convent at Matlock, when Derby was a Luftwaffe target during the war. He went on to Repton prep school and St Edward’s, Oxford, where he rowed in the first VIII. During his boyhood he often joined his father to inspect turret clocks in churches and public buildings around the country.
But on leaving school he embarked on accountancy training as an articled clerk with the Derby firm of Cooper Parry. Qualifying in 1960 with the highest marks in the Midlands, his reward was an attachment to a firm in Toronto. He returned to the family firm the following year, when his father succeeded as managing director.
Nick Smith had a hand in several mergers between Smith of Derby and other historic clockmakers, beginning in 1967 with JB Joyce of Whitchurch – which traced its origins to 1690 and was responsible for the clocks on the Eastgate at Chester (1899) and the Shanghai Customs House (1927). Smith also worked with others to secure the survival of another church-tower business, the bell founders Taylors of Leicester.
He was Master of the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers in 1994, and was active in the British Horological Institute. In Derby he was a magistrate and looked after the accounts of a number of local charities.
After retiring from executive duties in 2001, he was honorary president of the company. As well as mentoring his successors, he continued to entertain clients from China and the Middle East and to handle inquiries from horological scholars. He also took great enjoyment in tracking down “lost clocks” installed by his forebears. Other enthusiasms encompassed rowing, fencing, shooting, bell ringing and dancing, and in later years bridge, travel and learning to play the flute.
Nick Smith married, in Canada in 1961, Gretchen Bayley, a nurse whom he had met within days of arriving in Toronto. Gretchen died in 2014, and he is survived by their two sons and a daughter – and by the companion of his last three years, Liz Harris.
Nicholas Smith, born August 21 1935, died February 12 2018