Northallerton shops were once popular pub Black Swan Inn

In fact, once you know they are one, it is obvious that, despite all the disparities, they were once one.

This building was for more than 200 years until it closed in 1987, the Black Swan Inn.

Perhaps its most famous landlord was John Jackson, the legendary jockey whom we met a few weeks ago. Jackson, from Stainton-in-Cleveland, near Middlesbrough, was renowned for winning the St Leger at Doncaster on eight occasions – the same as Lester Piggott – and also for his drinking. He retired to Northallerton at the start of the 1820s, at about the time that a racecourse was being established at the south end of town, where County Hall is now.

When “the Northallerton”, the main race meeting was held every October with the Northallerton Gold Cup as the principal prize, the town was full, and the pubs and hotels put on balls and banquets for their guests. Mr Jackson, as mine host, would have been quite a draw to such a crowd.

However, he did not own the Black Swan. It belonged to Hugh Pannell, the town’s most highly regarded clockmaker.

A very complicated clock made by Hugh Pannell of Northallerton. Not only does it tell the time, but it has a second hand, a rocking ship at the top and also a central dial which tells which day of the month it is. Picture courtesy of David Severs

Mr Pannell was born in Stokesley and having served his apprenticeship to a clockmaker there, he arrived in Northallerton around 1750 to set himself up in business. He worked for 38 years, which means he probably made about 1,000 clocks, of which 110 are known to survive, dotted around the world, along with five of his watches.

All towns in those days had several clockmakers. Most houses had a longcase clock; most gentlemen carried a watch.

Mr Pannell’s instruments were a cut above the ordinary. He did produce the cheaper longcase clocks that needed to be wound every 30 hours, but some of his had mechanisms that went for four months. They had additional features like second hands, or date hands, or automatons – rocking ships or old Father Time – that added animation to the clockface and great complication to the mechanism.

On the right hand side of Northallerton High Street is the Black Bull at No 101 - it received the first London to Edinburgh coach in 1785 - and is that the top of the crooked neck of the Black Swan, at No 104, on the inn sign closest to the camera

With a thriving business, Mr Pannell came to own properties in the town, including in 1775, a pub called The Talbot (named after a medieval hunting dog), and around 1780, he transferred the name from the Black Swan Inn, on the other side of the main street, to it. By the time he bought the pub, it was already getting on for 100 years old, but he built houses in the yard behind which stretched right the way back to East Road.

Mr Pannell may well have bought the pub for his son, Joshua, who turned 21 in 1778. On old documents, Joshua is described as an innkeeper and a clockmaker, although when he died in 1803 “by a fall as it is supposed”, he was also termed a hardwareman.

Mr Pannell’s descendants kept the Swan until 1914 when it was sold to Cameron’s brewery, of Hartlepool, and it continued trading until January 1, 1987, after which the one pub was converted into the two shops we see today.

• We are indebted to Hugh Pannell’s great-great-great-great-great-grandson David Severs for sharing his lifetime’s research into the clockmakers of Northallerton. Dr Severs' books on the clockmakers of Northallerton, Bedale and Ripon are still available, and he would love to hear from anyone with a Northallerton clock. Contact him on 01609 771867.