PRECISION counts for everything at one of Hull's oldest city centre businesses.
Celebrating its 150th anniversary this year, the ground-floor showroom of B Cooke and Sons Ltd looks like something out of a Harry Potter film.
Dozens of clocks, barometers, globes and telescopes fill every wall, as well as numerous wooden-framed glass cabinets.
Upstairs, it is even more like Diagon Alley from the Potter books and films.
Ancient workshops are overflowing with machinery, benches, boxes and spare parts.
It is little wonder that the early 18th-century building in Market Place was originally an ironmongers. It is now known as The Kingston Observatory and is the home to an unique nautical equipment business.
Managing director Priyanka Perera proudly flicks through an old company catalogue before pointing to a Heeling Error.
"We are the only company in the world making them," she says, before explaining that the strange-looking piece of equipment helps to adjust compasses. "Last year, we built and sold six of them."
Originally from Sri Lanka, where she ran her own nautical chart business, she took over Cooke's after moving to Hull.
"When I came here, it was almost on the point of closing. The previous owner had decided to wind things down because he was preparing for retirement.
"Luckily, I saw an opportunity to keep it going and here we are in our 150th year.
"I want to try my best and, fortunately, I have a great team here who have a vast range of knowledge and experience."
That team includes instrument technician Norman Cammish, who has clocked up 45 years with the firm.
"It's a bit different to when I started," he says.
"In those days, you could walk out of the front door and get the part you needed in just a short walk from 20 or so different shops and businesses.
"These days, that same part is more than likely only available on order from somewhere out of Hull or even abroad."
As well as making precision shipping gauges, his many other duties include refurbishing old barometers and sextants the company also used to make until recently.
Mr Cammish said: "I'm doing up an old barometer for a chap who bought it at an auction at the moment. It's probably going to cost him more to refurbish it than it was to buy it."
On another floor, Brian Walker is making a brass ship's compass from scratch.
He has been at the firm for 30 years.
He said: "We get orders for them from all over the world. Not many places still make them in brass. The Germans make plastic ones but they just aren't the same."
And tucked away in the firm's chart room, "new boy" Sean Birch oversees the ordering and distribution of navigational charts to all corners of the globe. He has been in the same job for a mere 26 years, having joined on a two-year YTS placement.
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