This blog was started in 2012 and was originally intended to be an omnium gatherum of specific and conceivably interesting categories. The menus below mostly had sub-menus. The blog was a spin-off from a more time-consuming effort that took priority.
I never posted very regularly, and I didn’t promote the site. Looking back at my stats, I can’t help noticing that, even by 2015, I was excusing myself for long gaps between posts. I see that 2017 was the last year that I made regular posts. In the last 5 years there have been 30 short posts – none at all for the last 2 years.
It could easily be argued (I do so with myself sometimes) that I should quietly put the blog out of its misery and delete it. However, several thousand people a year visit the site and possibly find something of interest, entertainment – or even the exact thing they are looking for.
So I have decided to leave things as they are, at least for the time being. And thanks to those who have visited, even if only once…
If you are interested in Sundials of all kinds and / or Medieval Churches, there’s a properly working blog HERE
If you have an interest in natural history elsewhere in the world – birds, reef fishes, marine mammals – try HERE
Medieval scratch dials were cut into the stones of churches from Saxon times until around 1600, by which time they had been outcompeted by clocks. In the briefest summary, these scratch (or Mass) dials were primitive ways by which a medieval community, mostly uneducated, could tell or (more accurately) keep the time. All that was needed was a hole, a stick, a nail and some sunshine.
St Andrew . Yetminster . Dorset . Scratch Dial 1
St Andrew . Yetminster . Dorset . Scratch Dial 2
The concept of time as we know it did not exist early medieval times. Days were measured by the passage of the sun. Each community would have had its own daily rhythms. The earliest primitive scratch dials on country churches were the first public indicators of the day’s progress, and (later) the times of Mass. Designs gradually became more ambitious and elaborate. Scientific advances produced more technical and accurate dials, for example by graduating the space between the lines (radials) to allow for the declination of the sun; or bending the gnomon to adjust for latitude. Some later dials include decorative details. There’s a great deal more to be said on the topic, and some of it can be found at a new project called GAUDIUM SUB SOLE
Dials are often eroded, damaged, or both
St Andrew . Leigh . Dorset – Scratch Dial
The central hole for the gnomon (or ‘style’) is frequently filled in
St Peter & St Paul . Bishops Caundle . Dorset
Dials, for obvious reasons, are most usually found on the south side of a church. Favoured locations are the porch, the priest’s door, and a S. or SW. facing buttress. In some cases – especially on buttresses – more than one dial was incised. St Mary Bradford Abbas has an unusual example of large, similar dials overlapping. Repairs, as here, are often unsympathetic.
The second image shows a previously unrecorded dial, inverted, that I noticed high up on a corner tower. Stones with dials were often relocated as churches were reshaped and expanded. There’s a good example at CHARMINSTER. I’m beginning to suspect a correlation between a relocation and an inversion, almost as if to make clear the repurposing of the stone from time marker back to masonry.
St Mary . Bradford Abbas . Scratch dials 1 & 2
St Mary . Bradford Abbas . Scratch dial 3
A significant number of churches have multiple dials. Winterbourne Stoke (Wilts) has between 8 and 12, depending on individual interpretation. Some, including me, are keen to view any round hole as a potential style hole; and any random straight incision as a radial. Multi-dial churches are worth a close inspection. Rimpton has 4 recorded dials: I have visited twice recently and there are undoubtedly 2 more.
St Laurence, Holwell has 3 dials in a group on a buttress. Two are quite large and sophisticated. In the top half of the faintly encircled lower dial, there’s a small more rustic dial as shown in the diagram above (you can just see the style hole on the photo)
St Laurence . Holwell . Dorset
All six churches featured here are in the Three Valleys Benefice
Photos: Keith Salvesen sundails@gaudiumsubsole.org
ROLLING HARBOUR GALLERY 