18/02/2026
At Milton Ernest Hall Care Home I had the joy of sitting down with Peter Coleman 90 years old, softly spoken, and one of our most treasured creative artists.
If you met Peter in passing, you might not immediately realise you’re in the company of someone who has spent half a century repairing time itself. He calls himself “a very simple person.” But as he talks, you begin to understand that simplicity can hold extraordinary depth.
We started chatting about his artwork, and naturally the conversation drifted back to his career as a watch and clock repairer.
“After the war, you couldn’t get watches,” he told me. “So people wanted the old ones repaired. We got so many repairs.”
It’s hard to imagine now a time when you couldn’t just replace something. Things mattered. They were fixed, cherished, kept alive. And for fifty years, Peter was the man people trusted to do just that.
Before he owned a car, he cycled nearly twenty miles a day to work. Twenty miles there and back in all weathers. He says it without drama, without pride. Just fact. That quiet determination seems woven into him.
He trained when he was young, completing two years of office training after school, and later attended Luton College of Technology now part of the University of Bedfordshire.
“At college, I learnt to do repairs,” he said. “I didn’t like it when I wasn’t working.”
And you can tell he means it.
He described how he would carefully strip ladies’ watches apart every tiny screw, every delicate gear clean the parts in the machine, then reassemble them with precision. “You get satisfaction from doing that.”
There was something beautiful in the way he said it. Not boastful. Just content. The satisfaction of understanding how something works. Of putting it back together. Of making it right again.
“I’ve always been a bit arty,” he admitted. “I wasn’t built to be a builder or anything like that but that’s roughly what I did all my life.”
And in a way, he did build. Just not houses. He built movement. He built seconds and minutes and hours.
He worked in a shop in Rushden, established in 1946, a shop his cousin still runs today. A legacy of craftsmanship continuing quietly on.
But what truly fascinated me was what he did with the leftovers.
Most people would throw away discarded watch parts tiny metal scraps, worn-out pieces, useless fragments. Not Peter.
He saw possibility.
Using discarded watch pieces and patches, he began creating miniature models trucks, steam engines, and so much more. Intricate little sculptures born from what others would consider waste. Gears became wheels. Springs found new purpose. Fragments of broken time were transformed into something entirely new.
It feels poetic, really.
A man who spent his life repairing watches taking apart delicate mechanisms and reassembling them later took those same fragments and reimagined them as works of art.
His creativity didn’t stop there. He also developed a love for carved relief artwork and went on to study at Sharnbrook Upper School master the art of woodcarving. At Bridgemans Bowls Club in Harrold, a couple of his carved pieces are proudly displayed, inspired by a bowls theme he was particularly delighted with.
“I used to make art and give it away,” he said.
That part struck me deeply. He didn’t create for applause. He created because his hands needed to make things. Because he saw beauty in small details. Because he found joy in it.
Sitting with Peter, I felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude. At Milton Ernest Hall, we aren’t just surrounded by residents we are surrounded by lifetimes of skill, resilience, and imagination.
Peter may call himself simple.
But a man who cycles twenty miles a day without complaint, repairs watches for half a century, transforms discarded scraps into steam engines and trucks, and carves art just to give it away that is not simple.
That is quietly remarkable.
