Category: Future Meetings

Please note we have a date and venue change, due to the Election.

The May Meeting will be at

Soper Hall Community Centre, Harestone Valley Road, Caterham, CR3 6HY.

11th July 2024

Douglas Bateman BSc FBHI
‘Timekeeping: A hobby of a Lifetime’.

Doug has been a horologist for over 50 years, his first interest was precision horology which grew and grew into an extensive career. He has an extremely active scientific mind and an understanding of mathematics that led to him contributing to the 2nd edition of A J Rawlings book The Science of Clocks and Watches.

I first encountered him around 1978 when he handed over one of his radio check rate machines to Martin Burgess, creator of the Harrison clocks A and B after a Science Museum lecture. This was to my mind the infancy of the GPS clocks that we take for granted today. Douglas not only provided Martin with a state-of-the-art time base on which to test his Harrison masterpieces, but he also became involved in the 1990s with The Greenwich Time Ball when Jonathan Betts asked if it was possible for the Rugby radio time signal to control the raising and lowering of the ball. Doug is not only proficient with the making of a precision mechanical clock, i.e. temperature compensation and barometric pressure compensation, but also with electronics that are sometimes used to provide impulses and digital recording of time. He also understands the quality (Q) factor of a pendulum and he will bring along several Bob shapes to illustrate how a pendulum interacts with the air that surrounds it giving it a better Q. He was a lifelong friend of Philp Woodward and would have had many a discussion with Bob Holmstrom the long-term editor of the Horological Science Newsletter who recently passed away. Doug has a parallel interest in trig points and the history of Ordnance Survey. He was also involved with measuring Big Ben in the 70s when the fly shaft sheared, he has written many an article on horology including “The Trouble with John Harrison” He is an inaugural member of the British Sundial Society, a Fellow of the British Horological Institute and a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers.

Doors open 19:30 Starting 20.00 hours.

6th June 2024

‘The Clock and Watchmakers of Stow on the Wold’.

Barnaby Smith

Barnaby gives a lot of his time to being our treasurer and is also chairman/treasurer of the South-East Section of The Antiquarian Horological Society. He is also a member of the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers.

He worked for 38 years for the in-house bank of PSA Peugeot Citroen.

During the last year, Barnaby has written and privately published an informative work on “Clock and Watch Makers of Stow on the Wold”. Some of my introduction comes from his Preface. In 1986 shortly after moving into their new home, he purchased a lantern clock signed “Archer, Stow”. Inquisitively he wanted to know more of the Archer family and started to keep records of their clocks and also to collect some of them. This he thought would only be a dozen or so but he now has records of over 240 Archer family clocks, as well as those of other Stow makers.

This evening Barnaby will share with us his fascination for Stow on the Wold clocks. He will cover the three generations of the Archer family of clockmakers and will outline the different styles of clocks made by them, as well as the other clockmakers in the town.

Doors open 19:00 Starting 19:30 hours.

Please note we have a venue change, due to the Elections.

The May Meeting will be at

Soper Hall Community Centre, Harestone Valley Road, Caterham, CR3 6HY.

2nd May 2024

The South London Branch is delighted to welcome back Malcolm Archer Tutor from West Dean.

He will give us a short introduction on how he has been coping with teaching horology to the students over the last year and then individually introduce one of four student presentations.

Titles as follows:

Doors open 19:30 Starting 20.15 hours.

4th April 2024

The Antikythera Mechanism and a Modern Reproduction

Stephen Phillips, B Eng, C Eng, MIET

Doors open at 19:30, Starting 20.00 hours.

The meeting will be held at The White Hart Barn in Godstone.

THE WHITE HART BARN (Godstone Village Hall)

GODSTONE

SURREY RH9 8DU

7.30pm for 8.00pm Start