Newsletter No 52 - June 2009 |
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FROM THE SECRETARY Visit to Bramshill House. Previous issues of the Bulletin carried articles on an early meridian line and other dials. The house was known for many years as the Police Staff College, and now with a different name to reflect the changing breadth of police training. The marvellous Jacobean mansion was partly closed to the general public, although researchers with an interest in the house and gardens were always welcome. The authorities will be happy to host a party from the Society and the Curator of the building and library will give an escorted tour. This is a very rare opportunity, and the date for the visit will be the 6th of June. The tour will commence at 11am taking approximately 1 hour followed by coffee, tea and biscuits at a cost of £5 per head. We have 20 names on the list, and there is room for just a few more: please contact me if you wish your name to be added to the list. The address is Bramshill House, Hook, Hampshire, RG27 0JW. Doug Bateman FROM THE BULLETIN EDITOR I have recently come to realise what excellent resources local Record Offices represent for sundial research. Many people know of them as a means of finding out about their families when engaged in geneological research. But their records are very wide and I have found that the staff there are not only helpful and courteous but also often very knowledgeable. If you have a public sundial in your town, you might well find it mentioned in the minutes of council meetings, not to mention in old press cuttings. So, my challenge to members is to write some short notes of your local dials. Were they gifted by the local squire, moved as a result of a road-widening scheme, the site of a hideous crime or some other other notable act or just an ancient feature of the town? John Davis MASS DIAL MEANDERINGS Mass Dial Group Quite busy with our Continental friends chipping in with a couple of items. Firstly – a complete listing of French mass dials, very comprehensive but no pictures. I can forward the relevant e-mail and its 60 pages of attachment to anybody interested. Thanks to Denis Schneider for arranging this. Also in correspondence with Denis over “Why ‘mass’ dials?”. We have adopted the name; its first use is unknown, Horne has ‘scratch dials’ and Green ‘mass clocks’. Some thoughts on ‘pocks’ have emerged as they seem to be rare in France, so there may be a clue in that to their chronology. Also from France, Jerome Bonnin asked about Roman dials in Britain and I discovered that there aren’t many from Roman times (possibly two) but several others came later, usually the wealthy bringing back bits of Italy for their gardens, plus a couple of good replicas. Jerome and I are hoping to visit the British museum to see their collection. Entries into the Mass Dial Register recently have comprised Northumberland, Greater London, S. Yorkshire and W. Yorkshire. The two Yorkshires are annexes to Alan Cook’s comprehensive listing in Monograph No. 3 on Yorkshire mass dials. A new recorder in Wiltshire is now re-visiting her local churches with a digital camera and updating our present records. I told her that 15 dials on a church near her was a record and five days later John Lester sent in 19 + 1? From Hanwell in Oxfordshire! A recent invitation to give a talk to a NADFAS Group in Wiltshire gave me the opportunity to say ‘thank you’ to that organisation for their help in reporting dials to us over the years. Museums Survey This is to be published as Monograph No. 7. Ian Butson has prepared the text from the survey forms returned and Jill Wilson is assisting with the layout and editing. We are at the proof-reading stage and hope to hand over to John Davis for publication fairly soon. Needless to say, information is still coming in and is filed under ‘2nd edition’! A.O.Wood REGISTER NOTES The April ‘Dial of the Month’, on the Society web site, was the colourful vertical at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, SRN 5887. This has initials of ‘T’ at the top, and ‘WP’ below. I asked: “[William] Pitt's initials and the date are clearly marked, but the 'T' at the top is a puzzle, at least to me. I have seen it suggested that the initials on the dials at the Inns of Court are by tradition those of the most recent restorers, and therefore change over time. Is it possible that the 'T' arises from the last restorer being TWP, whose initials partly coincided with those of William Pitt?” My thanks to John Davis, who provided the answer: “The description asks what the T stands for of the TWP: the answer is 'Treasurer'. All the various Temple dials have a set of initials in the format - it is custom for a retiring Treasurer to make some gift to the site. Some give trees or other garden features but several (including William Pitt) have given dials (eg the Henry Wynne / Thomas Wright horizontal, the Cary horizontal and so on).” PS. I was wrong to suggest that the initials change with restorers, but Mrs Gatty does say that “The dates on the Temple dials are altered every time they are repainted, so are no guide to the time of their first erection.” If this was the tradition, it does not appear to have been continued. In my notes for March, I listed Cumbria as one of the counties with a large number of un-illustrated dials in the Register. Robert Sylvester was quick to remind me that he has, over the years, photographed nearly all, and indeed I have had more than one of his CDs on my desk since I took over as Registrar! My apologies to Robert, and pictures for almost all Cumbrian dials will grace the next edition. Another item from the fertile pen of John Davis: “Pinkie House [Musselburgh, Scotland, and now owned by Loretto School] is an early 17th-century layout by a prestigious owner Sir Alexander Seton, the Chancellor of Scotland from 1604. The main surviving feature from the 17th-century formal garden is a walled garden adjacent to the house with ornamental gateways, a wall-mounted sundial and a garden house on an outside wall... There are two dials in the Register at Pinkie House but neither fit the description of a 'wall sundial'.” John Foad U.S. DOLLAR SERVICE FOR MEMBERS Any members who are travelling to the United States, or have some business that can be settled with a cheque in dollars, might like to take advantage of this for the best rate available at the time. John Schilke looks after the Society's interests in the States, receiving and settling memberships. As the flow is greater in one direction and it is expensive to "repatriate" funds often, our account has a certain surplus, which can be made available to members. John can hand over cash in person to anyone attending the N.A.S.S. Conference, or a cheque for you to cash / mail according to your need. If you would like to know more, please contact me. Graham Stapleton MEMBERSHIP NOTES The Sundial Society continues to extend its membership across the world. We welcome Rosaleen Robertson from New Zealand, Nicola Severino from Italy and Dmitry Barchenkov from Russia. Nearer home, Tim Allen is from Northampton and David Payne is from Norwich. Over the past year that I have been membership secretary, we have had 20 new members. I would also like to thank John Foad for helping me with the new computer system for the mailing of the Bulletins. Jackie Jones COUNCIL MEETINGS Points from the meeting of 5th March 2009 : The Society accounts are audited very thoroughly each year, currently by our member Geoff Parsons. It was agreed, at Geoff’s suggestion, that an external professional auditor should be employed on occasion, possibly once every five years. The Dialling Miscellany is a publication sent to new members as an introduction and welcome to the Society. Current members therefore do not see it, and indeed some may never have had a copy, as it dropped out of production for a time. It was agreed that we should prepare an up-to-date edition and distribute it to all members; and that this would be repeated, possibly at five-yearly intervals. The Photographic competition attracted 24 entries this year. This is enough for a successful competition, but from now on, in the expectation of drawing a larger entry, it will be held only every other year. It was agreed in principle that a wide selection of UK dials should be illustrated on the Society web site. Security considerations will mean that it will be a restricted list, but once it has been developed it will give members, and the general public, access to information and photographs for a large number of our finest dials. Next Meeting. Thursday 2nd July 2009, at the Royal Astronomical Society, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London. John Foad ROBERT BURNS AND SUNDIALS The poet Robert Burns was born 250 years ago, on 25th January 1759, before Harrison’s chronometer was acknowledged as a reliable timekeeper for maritime purposes. Though, in his youth, reliable sundials were still essential, it is not generally known that part of his very limited education was a very intensive summer school that taught how to design sundials. He attended the school of Hugh Rodger in Kirkoswald on the Ayrshire coast in the west of Scotland. He studied for the quiet months before harvest and did well. In his autobiographical letter, written in 1787, he proudly remarked “I spent my nineteenth summer [1777] on a smuggling coast, a good distance from home, at a noted school, to learn mensuration, surveying, dialling, &c., in which I made a pretty good progress. .. [and] … went on with a high hand with my geometry, till the sun entered Virgo.” The young man also swaggered that in this first summer away from home he had a good time, but his poetry shows that he was right to say that “this circumstance in my life made some alteration in my mind”. The studies were intended to qualify him in a lucrative profession, but instead, added to his childhood school studies of astronomy, enriched his poetry. After he was acclaimed as a rustic poet, he settled near Dumfries in south-west Scotland. His neighbour, Robert Riddell, gave him permission to use a summer house on his grounds. His lines he wrote in this Hermitage at Friar’s Carse hint the uncertainties and hopes in the passage of time: Life is but a day at most, [Editor’s Note] In her recently published biography “The Stars of Robert Burns”, Catherine gives considerably more commentary on the studies of sundials and astronomy generally that Burns undertook, and how they affected his philosophy. The book is available only direct through www.circlepublications.com. BSS GRANTS POLICY. I am pleased to say that the BSS Grants Policy has now been reissued after a review of the Society’s financial position, potential liabilities and necessary reserves. Grants will come from the BSS Andrew Somerville Memorial Fund (ASMF) which receives all donations made to the Society in the form of gifts, legacies, proceeds of auctions etc. In addition, the ASMF can also receive an annual transfer of up to 25% of the amount the Society receives in Gift Aid from the Inland Revenue in that year. The transfer will only occur if there are suitable projects approved for grants. The first call on the ASMF is to fund the annual Andrew Somerville Memorial Lecture and grants will only be given if there is a sufficient reserve in the fund for this purpose. Grants may be made towards the following costs:- educational activities, restoration/repair of existing significant sundials, manufacture of a replacement sundial, protection of vulnerable sundials. The size of any grant for restoration will generally not exceed 50% of the cost of the work/item. Requests for grants must be made in writing, via a BSS member to the Restoration Advisor initially. Decisions on whether to make a grant and the amount will be made by the BSS Council subsequently. The restoration grant fund will be operated annually as a finite sum. It will only be renewed in January of each year, so some applications may not be fundable until the following year. The full details and conditions are described in the BSS Grants Policy Iss. 2.1 available on the web site or by email/mail from me. Graham Aldred MESSIER MARATHON ACHIEVED While hardly relevant to sundials, it may be of interest to the astronomically minded to know that the challenge of the Messier Marathon using binoculars has been achieved by George Gilbart-Smith on the night of 21-22 March 2009 near Siwa in Egypt. George is a retired mathematics schoolmaster and amateur astronomer. Julian Lush BSS SUNDIAL SAFARI TO EAST ANGLIA September 19th - 25th 2009 There is still time to join us in our forthcoming Safari. We intend to visit Colchester, Norwich, Bury St Edmunds, Elmdon and Aldeburgh where there are some interesting dials to see. The estimated cost including our 3* hotel near Ipswich (half board) and coach transport is just £395 plus £60 single supplement. Clumber Park The large horizontal dial in Clumber Park (Nottinghamshire) was stolen from its pedestal last year. So far, it has not been recovered so its owners, the National Trust, have commissioned a reproduction. The problem is, there is a shortage of photographs of the missing dial – there are some good general shots in the BSS Register which allow the overall structure to be seen but there is a lack of anything showing the details of the engraving. The dial was by John Whitehurst. Other dials by him are known, including a rather later one in Derby Museum. It is possible that readers will have photographed the Clumber Park dial or one of the other Whitehurst dials. If so, John Davis would be very pleased to hear from you.
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