TEENAGER Lewis Walduck has plenty of time on his hands… literally. For the 17-year-old, whose first words as a baby were “Tick-tock”, has just started a rare horological apprenticeship with the Clock Work Shop in Kings Worthy.

“I love my job and am so grateful for it,” said Lewis, one of whose distant ancestors was Oliver Cromwell. “It’s a dream come true – clocks and watches, and how they work, have fascinated me for as long as I can remember.”

Clocking on for his apprenticeship means a 70-mile drive every day from his home in Bicester, Oxfordshire, and caused a desperate race to pass his driving test before Christmas to avoid a potential four-hour train journey to work.

“Fortunately I passed first time,” said Lewis, whose love of timepieces began when his great grandfather gave him his pocket watch. Then his great grandmother presented him with a clock that had once belonged to her grandparents.

“It’s not the most valuable I have in monetary terms,” he said. “But for sentimental reasons it means the most to me. I have been hooked on watches and clocks ever since. They are so beautiful and I am fascinated by their intricate workings.”

While still at primary school, Lewis was taking watches apart and mending them for relatives and friends. By the age of 13, he was buying and selling them at a Buckinghamshire antiques fair he ran with his dad.

Now he has a collection of more than 50 antique clocks and watches, some dating back to the 18th century and one that used to belong to fabulously wealthy Rothschild family.

His grandmother Julie Bradford said: “We’re so proud of Lewis. He has been fascinated by clocks since he was a baby.

“In fact his first words were ‘tick-tock’ and when I took him out as a toddler we always had to stop outside any shop selling clocks or watches so he could stare in the window.”

The Clock Work Shop, established in 1966 had its headquarters in Parchment Street, Winchester, for many years before joining forces with Simon Allen, of Abbotsbury, Dorset, and later moving to Kings Worthy.

On his first day at work, Lewis found himself taking apart and refurbishing an antique £5,000 clock that plays the Whittington Chimes – named after Dick, the former London mayor – every hour.

Now £5,000 might sound a lot. But Lewis’s ambition is one day to own a clock made by the celebrated 17th century horologist Joseph Knibb of Oxford.

And they can cost up to £300,000!