Meeting reports

The Wales and the Marches Horological Society, Summer 2019 Meeting took place at the Cardiff Model Engineering Society’s club house in Roath Park on the 15th June. Members of the society provided a variety of items for examination and discussion, each one an example of a different horological genre. Tony Panes brought a Longcase movement with round brass dial by J Bennitt of Uttoxeter. It’s nice example of a late brass dial, probably made during the white dial period with high quality engraving. It also features a direct drive penny moon. Clearly a prized object in its time. Lyndon Elson exhibited a collection of four well preserved pocket timepieces each with a story to tell: A Farmers Verge in Silver Pair Case with pictorial enamel dial Hallmarked 1835. The movement was signed Thomas Edwards Corwen. It is sobering to reflect on the Dickensian conditions in which watchmakers, particularly those in Coventry, worked under during this period. A gilt cased monogrammed pocket watch with pedometer winding circa 1900. One could almost smell the port and cigars this grandiose object conjured up. Testimony to the era before the great war changed the lives of so many. Also shown was a 1/5 second stop watch with wooden box by Seikosha circa 1941, and a 6 second Waltham Allied Submarine detection investigation committee (ASDIC) time circa 1943 which is calibrated to range find submarines with reference to sonar beeps. Both of these watches may have seen military service but each serving a very different ideology. Alan Cobb brought a clock for discussion. It is of a type occasionally found of which little is known. It has the appearance of a French movement and yet the evidence of lantern pinions and an unusual spring barrel seems to speak otherwise. The verdict was that its quality places it somewhere between French and American through not obviously German in origin...low grade Austrian perhaps ? Dr Ed Cloutman gave a short talk about his recent trip to service and repair turret clocks in Bermuda, at the invitation of the authorities. Steven Tyrer represented the practical horologist by exhibiting a home built Eureka Tool for applying the back clearance when making gear cutters and a vacuum pump both ingeniously made and invaluable. Jon Parker 4th August 2019