The Fellmarrow House Notebooks and the Clockmaker’s Fallen Chair

The parlour’s air is tinged with the faint metallic scent of brass filings and dried oil—a craftsman’s presence lingering in the quiet. Fellmarrow House feels paused at the hinge of a day that never finished, its objects waiting for hands that will not return.

The Patient, Intricate Life of Thaddeus Jorin Fellmarrow

Thaddeus Jorin Fellmarrow, an esteemed but soft-spoken horologist known for restoring complex timepieces from across the country, lived here with his wife, Evadne, and their daughter, Lucilla.

His discipline was legendary: gears sorted by diameter, springs labeled by tension, and repaired mechanisms arranged in meticulous rows awaiting pickup. In the Workshop Study, glass jars of screws sit alphabetized by thread, and notebooks filled with micro-sketches chart the internal anatomy of clocks as carefully as medical diagrams.

Evadne, who once managed correspondence and household routines, left her imprint through tidy sewing supplies, neatly folded linens, and recipe notes tucked into corners. Lucilla’s childhood echoes remain in scattered items: a paint-stained wooden toy horse, a half-finished sketch of a flower, and a child’s practice slate etched with looping letters.

But the growing demand for Thaddeus’s expertise overwhelmed him. Commissions piled faster than he could complete them. His once-neat sketches tightened into crowded lines; correction marks scarred pages he once kept immaculate. Evadne’s sudden illness fractured the last of their structure. After her passing, Lucilla went to live with relatives, leaving her belongings where they naturally fell. Thaddeus remained only a short while longer before quietly abandoning his workshop mid-task. Fellmarrow House has not shifted since.

A Corridor Worn by Careful Footsteps

Upstairs, the corridor still holds the imprint of steady pacing. The runner rug dips in softened, sagging folds; its floral pattern has faded into dusty near-monochrome. A hall table holds a broken watch chain, a spectacles arm, and a small notebook where Thaddeus logged repair requests—its final entry trailing off without date or conclusion. Pale outlines in the wallpaper mark where family portraits once hung, removed thoughtfully rather than hastily.

A Sewing Room Holding Quiet Domestic Pause

In the Sewing Room, Evadne’s last mending remains in place. A child’s sleeve lies pinned beneath the treadle machine’s presser foot. Pincushions hardened by time bristle with rusted needles. Thread spools, toppled across the table, have faded into chalk-soft pastels. Folded muslin stiffened along its edges rests like a task awaiting hands that never returned.

Behind the smallest crate lies a slip of paper in Thaddeus’s careful script: “Finish escapement — tomorrow.” Tomorrow never arrived. Fellmarrow House remains abandoned in quiet suspension.