n the late 1800s, Jules Magnin and Pauline Jacot became the new owners of a small building in the centre of La Chaux-de-Fonds. They used the ground floor to set up a watch components workshop that would be occupied by successive generations. How many? Nobody really knows, but it was probably around the 1970s when the last mécanicien-horloger in this unassuming dynasty turned the key in the lock for the last time.

This forgotten workshop would only come to light in 2011, when one of the last members of the family passed away. The stairwell is in its original state. On the yellowing faux marble walls, a single word, CUISINES, has been written in black paint, underlined with an arrow pointing to the basement. Later, we learn that a soup kitchen had operated there during the war. Next to it stands a plain wooden door and, behind it, a place forgotten by time.

Our first reaction on seeing the workshop and its different rooms is one of stupefaction. Apart from a layer of dust, it’s for all the world as though the occupant had simply popped out for a few minutes and would return to find us standing there. Everything is in its place: countless machines, presses, lathes, chisels, groups of files, tools in every shape and form, sheets of metal, a pair of weighing scales, even a typewriter and notes pinned to the wall.

In a corner sits a central motor. Through a system of gears, leather belts and pulleys that run along the ceiling and across the walls, it drove the wheels that turned the machines. It doesn’t take much to imagine the clickety-clack that must have filled the workshop at its busiest.

What exactly did they make here? Régis Hugenin is the curator at the Musée International d’Horlogerie in La Chaux-de-Fonds, now the workshop’s custodian: “It served so many purposes, it’s hard to say. It was used to manufacture tools, such as for making springs, lathes, drills, files, various machinery. There was a small foundry and it also doubled up as a weights and measures bureau. It’s not so much the individual objects that are of interest as the place as a whole.”

Independent workshops such as this were legion during the nineteenth century and it’s this sheer ordinariness that saved it. There are no hidden treasures here, but the rarity of finding such a place intact, untouched, was sufficient to convince La Chaux-de-Fonds municipality to preserve it in its entirety, exactly as it had been found, while “excavating” its contents with archaeological method and care.

A touching journey through time, for the memory of future generations.