Stepping back in time to the age of sundials (From Gazette & Herald)

Stepping back in time to the age of sundials

2:50pm Wednesday 11th November 2009

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I WAS in a garden centre near a selection of sundials when a woman asked “Will they show the right time in winter?” She will have no idea she inspired these notes.

A sundial is an intriguing asset to any garden, even though we might not wholly rely on it for telling the time. However, that is its basic task and some experts assert sundials are more reliable and accurate than the most modern of clocks, providing they are aligned absolutely with the sun.

Their role is not restricted to gardens, however, for sundials in varying forms have for centuries appeared on buildings such as churches, town halls and private houses.

Through the ages there have been some highly-complex examples based on the simple fact that the time of day can be marked by the sun’s shadow of a pointer falling upon a dial.

No-one can determine precisely when sundials were first used but it is generally thought to be around 1500 BC when the ancient Egyptians used such a device to mark the divisions of the day.

It is known that the first sundial erected in Rome was in 290 BC and by 164 BC there were more than a dozen varieties, some being horizontal and others vertical, and perhaps more astonishingly, they included portable ones. They were the pocket watches or computers of the time, being small enough to carry around in a pocket.

The very early dials were fairly simple. They did not divide each day into periods of one hour, preferring larger units such as a half, third or quarter of a day.

As the astronomers’ knowledge increased, so those divisions became smaller and a 12th of the day became normal for each one.

Surprisingly, that was achieved by an astronomer called Berosus as long ago as 300 BC. Working examples of his dial survived for centuries.

Here in England during Anglo-Saxon times, some early sundials appeared on the walls of parish churches. These had a vertical face with a marker called a gnomon that cast the sun’s shadow upon the dial as the day progressed. These did not mark the hours or even split the day into 12 parts but instead divided it into four parts each of three hours duration. Those divisions were called tides.

In some cases, later additions were made by marking each tide with divisions of an hour, but these old dials followed a fairly common pattern.

Installed on church walls and known either as scratch dials or Mass dials, they were carved in stone or sometimes merely scratched on the surface. They had a gnomon (a pointer) that was generally of wood.

In all cases, a vertical noon line was present with lines at right angles marking 6am and 6pm but sometimes with more lines depicting 9am or some other important hour such as the time of Mass. Fewer than 30 examples still exist around this country with one of the finest being above the door of the ancient Kirkdale Minster near Kirkbymoorside.

This is thought to be the most complete example of its kind anywhere in the world and carries the longest known inscription from Anglo-Saxon times. Sometimes called St Gregory’s Clock, it shows the eight hours of the Anglo-Saxon day and in 1711 was discovered hidden under plaster. Like that Minster, it is named after Pope Gregory the Great who despatched St Augustine to Canterbury as its first Archbishop.

But surely the most intriguing of sundials are the portable ones. The tendency to use portable sundials was highlighted with one of the most elaborate being used by Sir Francis Drake on his explorations.

It was created for him by Humphrey Cole in AD 1569 and appeared to be rather like a pocket watch. When opened, however, it produced two dials, one known as the equatorial dial that was set for latitude by the quadrant, and a meridian dial set by a magnetic compass.

The instrument also included a tide-table, a nocturnal, a diagram of planetary aspects and a circumferentor. I am not sure what all these devices were, or what they were supposed to do but the entire device must have been something like a modern pocket calculator and of great value to a navigator who travelled the world.

This region contains many fascinating and ancient sundials including a curious one at Gillamoor, one in Castle Howard that reportedly came from Middlesbrough, and one on a King James I hunting lodge near Easingwold bearing an inscription: Hours fly, flowers die; New days, new ways, Pass by. Love Stays.

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