The 193-year-old clock at St. Peter's Church in St. George's may have stopped ticking — but British clockmaker Melvyn Lee is certain its time is not up yet.

Mr. Lee, a director of Thwaites and Reed, the company which made the clock in England almost two centuries ago, is on the Island to assess the cost of repairing it and reinstating it in the church's bell tower. A video interview with him can be seen at www.theroyalgazette.com.

The handmade mechanical timepiece — bought at an auction in England in 1814 and shipped to the Island by the –Royal Navy — has been gathering dust on top of the safe in the office of the Rev. Erskine Simmons since it stopped during a hurricane earlier this decade.

It was replaced in the bell tower by an electric clock which also stopped after suffering damage during Hurricane Fabian. Now the Friends of St. Peter's — a group dedicated to the upkeep of what is believed to be the oldest continually used protestant church in the Western hemisphere — want to put the 1814 clock back in place.

Dr. Simmons said: "It will be probably the oldest public clock in Bermuda. It's been there almost 200 years now and we would like to see it repaired and replaced.

"He (Mr. Lee) will be able to tell us just how much it will cost for us to get it back in place and working. Mr. Lee has already given us some good news and that's that all of the parts are here. The only parts that are missing are the pendulum and the weights. He feels that we will be able to get it back into working condition."

Dr. Simmons contacted Mr. Lee after finding the name Thwaites and Reed engraved on the clock and discovering on the Internet that the company, founded in 1740, still exists.

Mr. Lee, who personally maintained Big Ben in London for ten years, said his Brighton-based firm was used to getting calls about centuries-old clocks and was almost always able to fix them.

"We are rather pleased to be still considered by old customers," he said. "You really do have in St. George's a bit of a jewel in the crown. It's been out of sight, out of mind, and it's bad when that happens.

"I would have thought that local government and the people concerned with local works and tourism would have a really serious interest in making sure this project goes through.

"This is a World Heritage site. It's be quite nice if the Bermuda Government decided that this needed to be done."

Mr. Lee, who travels around the world restoring clocks and whose last job was an £800 million restoration of the clock at St. Pancras train station in London, said that once back in place, the St. Peter's timepiece would give accurate time to within a minute-and-a-half each week if regularly wound.

"They are unique in that you don't have this kind of clock made anymore.

"And to have one and not to use it, well, if we can make it a working model again, that would be marvellous."