WALKING down Zetland Street in Northallerton is like taking a journey back in time.

On one side is Register House which a couple of hundred years ago was the most important municipal building in town.

Opposite is a record shop selling circular pieces of vinyl which, in the pre-digital days before downloads, were the only way you could carry your music around with you.

And next to that is Dennis & Parry’s old-fashioned shoemakers. Open the door, step back in time. The smell of leather fills the air, and the benches are full of old machines – hand-powered, foot-treadled and belt-driven – for cutting, compressing, chamfering, slicing, squeezing, stitching, shaping, edging…

It is also an invitation to talk a load of old cobblers: here is a fudge machine, these are called lasts, this tool is a leather skive and over there is a stitcher which can do both welts and blakes.

Originally, Zetland Street was just a back lane off the High Street – the pinfold, where stray animals were rounded up and kept, was somewhere in the area.

But in 1735, an Act of Parliament ordered that four archives of property deeds should be set up, including one in Northallerton. Space was found on the back lane for its construction, and it opened as Register House in 1736 – this was effectively the start of Northallerton as the county town of the North Riding. In 1782, the renowned Yorkshire architect John Carr enlarged it and added a courthouse beside it in which disputes arising from the deeds could be settled.

This building – now occupied by photographer Joe Cornish’s gallery – was one of the most important in town, so a grand arched entrance to it was provided off the High Street.

In the late 1840s, the archway was demolished and the lane widened into a proper street, which allowed Mr Dennis to establish his cobbler’s shop in an old outhouse opposite in the early 1880s.

Mr Dennis was succeeded by his son, Arthur, who in 1923 teamed up with David Parry to invest in the very latest shoemaking machinery.

In 1933, a journalist from Town and Country News visited and was amazed by the array of up-to-date devices. He wrote: “The number of ingenious machines in use is really surprising. The leather is cut to size by a special steam process and is then rolled to close the pores. This replaces the old method of hammering to render porous leather waterproof.”

It was still complicated stuff, though. A cobbler had to serve a five year apprenticeship before qualifying.

And it was still labour-intensive: Mr Dennis and Mr Parry employed two men and six apprentices. The apprentices earned £1 15s per week which increased to £2 10s when they qualified, and Mr Dennis and Mr Parry paid themselves the princely salary of £3 10s a week. Between them, they made 600 pairs of boots and shoes a week, and carried out countless repairs.

Nowadays, the business is a one-man operation, run by Gary Puggmurr of Darlington who took it over earlier this year from Alan Grainger, who bought it in 1984.

Gary still employs some of the old machines and tools, while the others, like the 15 stone leather press mangle, act as museum pieces in the shopwindow.

Cobbling, of course, has been a trade since man strapped something hard and flexible to the sole of his foot and called it a sandal. But no one knows where the word “cobble” comes from – some sources say it is from “to couple” as cobbler couples a sole with an upper, but the Oxford English Dictionary refutes this – and no one knows why cobblers have such a reputation for hasty, clumsy work.

Indeed, there’s quite a skill to it. For instance, Gary’s skive machine slices through the leather, and his stitching machine puts in either welt stitches – the traditional ones around the outside – or blake stitches, which are named after Lyman Blake of Massachusetts who in 1858 patented the first shoe sewing machine and started the cheap mass-production of shoes. The job is finished by the fudge machine, which puts decorative rill around the edge.

While cobbling Gary slips the shoes over a “last” – a metal model of a foot – which gave rise to the saying that “a cobbler should stick to his last”. The story goes that a Greek painter, Apelles, was proudly displaying his new picture when a shoemaker walked by and loudly condemned inaccuracies in the way the clog had been depicted.

Apelles had a look, realised that the shoemaker was right, and quickly made amendments.

When the shoemaker returned, he was amazed to see that the famous painter had taken his remarks on board. Emboldened, he launched into criticism of the way the legs had been painted, but Apelles thought they were anatomically correct and said that the cobbler should stick to his last, should stick to what he knew best: shoes.

Which is what Gary, who has been shoe mending since he was 19, is doing. He’s just won a boot repair contract from the Army, and is branching out into horse tack.

“I like Mr Dennis and Mr Parry,” he says. “I like their attire and the old school way they repaired the shoes and handed on their skills. I never met them, I’ve only just discovered their first names, but I feel they are still here in some way along with their machines.”