The Northern Section meetings offer a variety of formal lectures and club nights at their meeting hall together with staging exhibitions at local museums, demonstrations of horological conservation and visits to horological places of interest.
The Club Nights and Lectures usually alternate each month with a guest lecturer being invited to give a presentation to the meeting, often with visual aids and exhibits. For the club night a theme is chosen, and members are encouraged to bring items for display, and possibly to say a few words about them.
The meetings are friendly, relaxed and give the opportunity to meet new friends with similar interests, exchange views, ideas, and get help with solving your horological problems. As well as this you relax with refreshments whist your discussions take place.
Our meetings are held on the second Friday of each month at 7:30 for 8:00 pm and carry on until everyone leaves, usually between 10:30 and 11:00 pm. The venue is in the church hall behind the old Trinity Chapel off Northenden Road, Sale Moor, where there is ample parking around the hall. This is located on the south side of Manchester within half a mile of Sale Railway station and close to the M60 junctions 6 and 7.
Visitors and new members are always most welcome.
Northern Section
To be held at Trinity Methodist Church, Trinity Road, Sale, Cheshire, M33 3ED at 7.30pm, unless otherwise stated
Friday 10 April **MEETING CANCELLED** due to coronavirus situation
CLUB NIGHT: Show and tell letter W
Friday 8 May **MEETING CANCELLED** due to coronavirus situation
LECTURE: ‘Carriage Clocks’ by Adrian Overton
Friday 12 June **MEETING CANCELLED** due to coronavirus situation
CLUB NIGHT: World horology excluding UK, USA, France, Germany and Switzerland
Full Programme for 2020 (PDF download, updated 12 March)
Clock and watch advertising papers (February 2020)
A vast and wide-ranging display of items, dating back to 1795 was assembled by members at the start of the meeting. These included clock and watchmakers’ catalogues and stationery; watch papers; boxes for display, presentation or storage all marked with makers’ names and addresses; trade directories and other reference materials. The newest items were the glossy catalogues of prestigious watch making companies such as Patek Philippe, while the oldest were a set of watch papers. Members described their items to the audience and outlined their history and importance.
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Members’ items brought in for discussion |
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Pages from a large format informative booklet produced by the Hamilton Watch Company towards the end of WWll. It outlined some of the company’s manufactures for the war effort and informed the public about the fine watches it would be making in peacetime |
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JG Graves Ltd of Sheffield, Manufacturers and Merchants. This company purchased many watches from the Lancashire Watch Company which were signed with the Graves name. The company must have been proud of its building which was pictured on its notepaper, invoices and receipts, giving an impression of permanence, quality and reliability |
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Three watch papers advertising businesses in the Cambridge area which could be up to 200 years old. Watch papers can be a useful guide to a watch’s provenance, but must be regarded with some caution as they are easily transferred from one watch to another |
AGM and short video presentations (January 2020)
The first meeting of the year began with the Northern Section’s AGM. This was followed by a showing of three horological videos -
1. The Coventry Watch Museum Project.
2. How a Watch Works
3. What Makes a Fine Watch Fine
The first told the story of watchmaking in Coventry from the earliest times. The second and third videos were produced by the Hamilton Watch Company in the 1940s.