The Auction Centre, Leyburn

William Neville Blakey (1914-2009)

William Neville Blakey was born in 1914, and lived over the family antique shop in Brierfield, Lancashire. After attending the local school until he was 14, Neville began helping in the family business, and took a great interest in clocks, pictures and antique furniture. However, times were hard, and he chose instead to enter the ironmongery trade at a large outlet in nearby Burnley. Enlisting after the outbreak of the Second World War, life in the Army took Neville overseas, including to Egypt, where he worked on aeroplane instruments. Wherever he was stationed, Neville would send antiquities back to his family shop and made numerous useful contacts. By the end of the war, Neville was ready for a new challenge, and although he was offered a directorship in the ironmongery business in which he had worked before the war, he instead started a locksmiths after being approached by people to use his skills in working on clocks that he had acquired in the family shop, to help fit keys to locks. His locksmith business thrived, as did the family antiques and restoration workshop, and soon he moved into larger premises. As he replaced locks for customers, he would keep the old locks – and thus evolved his extraordinary collection of locks. Neville was a visionary locksmith and safe engineer, and he designed and built master keyed suites for homes and factories as well as being a founder member of the Master Locksmiths Association. Outside of his businesses, Neville was a talented organist, holding posts at the local parish church and covering for absent organists at other churches. In his spare time, he built the largest concert organ in Europe and held monthly concerts with organists from around the world, including American Carlo Curley and the former Prime Minister Sir Edward Heath. Neville continued to work regularly into his nineties, and J H Blakey and Sons (Security) Ltd is now in its 120th year, providing specialist locksmithing services nationwide. The company is still family owned and run.

The Blakey Lock Collection, now up for auction, is unique. It covers almost every aspect of locks, from doors and safes to machinery. The collection includes the likes of a 16th Century Chest Lock from Loganbank in Scotland, a late 17th Century Dutch Door Lock, and a collection of locks removed from doors in Litchfield Cathedral, through to locks from public lavatories, mental hospitals, castles, and aristocratic houses along with Victorian Chubb locks and a vast array of keys.