2021 January Meeting

7th January 2021

A talk by Graham Morse

The restoration of three watches by ‘Messrs: Leroux, Roskell, Mudge & Dutton’.

The South London Branch is delighted to welcome back Graham Morse, from the Wessex branch who many of you will remember gave us a fantastic talk in February 2020. For those of you who have not attended the speaker’s previous talk hear is a brief resume of his involvement in horology in his own words.

“Before retiring from Xerox in 2013, I had been fascinated by horology since I bought, on a whim at a local auction some 30 years before, a French black marble mantel clock. After repairing it, and in the process being persuaded by a local clockmaker to join the BHI Wessex Branch, I progressed from these clocks, via a brief foray into wristwatches, to the world of English watches from the 18th and early 19th centuries. I think much of the attraction of this field for me lies in the largely handmade nature of these pieces and the complexity of the trade, comprising such a multiplicity of crafts, which produced them. The nature of their manufacture frequently gives rise to the necessity to make replacement parts from the raw materials, something I sometimes find challenging but always most rewarding.

My involvement with the Wessex Branch has deepened, from initially taking over the maintenance and running of our auction database software and its general administration, to now having been Chairman since Andrew James stood down in 2017, I’m also a member of the Antiquarian Horological Society, the Dorset Clocks Society and the NAWCC.

The Zoom presentation deals in some detail with the repair and restoration of three pocket watches.

1   A Quarter Repeater signed for John Leroux,

2   A Rack Lever signed for Robert Roskell,

3   A Cylinder signed for Thomas Mudge & William Dutton

Meeting held on line via Zoom.