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
Meetings and events cancelled until further notice due to the Coronavirus situation
Some provisional dates for meetings have been pencilled in for 9 July, 13 August and 10 September. Details will appear on this page.
Full Programme for 2020 (PDF download, updated 12 March)
Recent Meetings
Maltese Clocks (March 2020)
At the March meeting members were introduced to a topic few were familiar with – clocks made on the island of Malta. Steve Tennick began with a history of clockmaking on the island and went on to describe the island’s unique style of wall clock which he had seen made there using traditional methods.
The Maltese wall clock has particular characteristics, consisting of a highly decorated wooden box with two doors. The inner door features the clock face, the dial and a small aperture showing the pendulum. The outer door includes the glass pane, which protects the mechanism from dust. Dials are painted with flowers and typically have local rural or maritime scenes at their centre. To our eyes, their movements are upside-down with winding barrels at the top, pulleys at the very top and weights which fall down the sides. The escapement is at the bottom. Steve had seen the cases of these clocks being made in Valetta. The illustrations below show clock cases under construction.
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.
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.