Alan Nance, often remembered as the Watchmaker Healer of St Austell, was born on St Mary’s in the Isles of Scilly. He grew up within the Methodist traditions of chapel and Sunday School before going to sea at the age of fourteen. During the First World War, he served with the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry and was badly wounded by German artillery near Passchendaele. The effects of that experience stayed with him for the rest of his life. Between the wars, Nance worked as a watchmaker in Plymouth and later on the Isles of Scilly. His life changed during a period in Australia, where he met Bill Austen, a former editor of Psychic News. Through Austen, Nance became interested in spiritual healing and began studying its ideas and methods. By 1956, he was experimenting with prayer and laying on of hands to relieve severe pain in his own eye. When the pain disappeared overnight, he became convinced that healing through spiritual practice was real. Nance later returned to Cornwall and settled in St Austell, a town he felt strongly drawn back to. On Trevarthian Road, he opened a small watch repair shop that also became a place where people came to seek healing. To customers, he appeared as a quiet tradesman, usually dressed in a grey suit and red tie. In the back room, however, he offered spiritual healing to people suffering from illness, pain, and distress. He did not charge for this work, believing that he was acting only as a channel for a greater force. Many stories were later told about those who visited him. Some claimed that people recovered in ways that seemed difficult to explain, including a young woman who regained consciousness after a car accident, a man whose tumours reportedly shrank, and a boy named Danny whose serious heart condition appeared to improve. These accounts belong to the testimony of patients and families rather than formal medical evidence, but they became central to Nance’s reputation. To him, such cases were not personal miracles, but examples of a healing power available through faith, love, and spirit. Nance accepted that many doctors were sceptical, but he did not see spiritual healing as a replacement for conventional medicine. He believed the two could exist alongside one another, with each offering help in different ways. He also spoke openly about death, describing it as “only a door opening,” and saw healing as part of a wider belief in the survival of the spirit.