Conference and AGM, 28 - 30 March 2008, Latimer Conference Centre, Buckinghamshire, HP5 1UG
The conference for 2008 will follow the usual pattern, but with the difference that we are to be in hotel-like accommodation complete with access to a large swimming pool.
The Andrew Somerville lecture is to be given by Dr Alison Morrison-Low, National Museums of Scotland on the subject "Scottish Sundials at National Museums Scotland". Other speakers are Chris Williams on mass dial research, and John Davis on the 18thC dial and instrument maker, John Rowley. Fred Sawyer, Celia James and Julian Lush will also give talks. At this stage there is room on the programme for more speakers, and hopefully more on mass dials.
Coach Tours.
On the Saturday afternoon there is a choice of coach tours. One is a 30 minute journey to the National Trust Hughenden Manor (home of Disraeli). Only one sundial, but the usual relaxing house, garden and restaurant facilities.
The other tour is a 40 minute journey to Leighton Buzzard to see the parish church which has no less than 5 dials, and there is another dial nearby.
Accommodation.
This time we are to have high standard rooms. Nearly all are double bedded plus 8 twin bedded rooms, and a few single bedded. If you wish to have twin beds please mention this on the booking form. There is plenty of parking.
Travel.
The Centre is about 3 miles from Junction 18 on the M25. The nearest station is Chalfont and Latimer which is about 5 minutes by taxi to the Centre. The station is on the Metropolitan line and the Chiltern line, both connecting with London Marylebone. Heathrow is about 25 miles away. More detailed directions will be included with the normal joining letter and draft programme that will be sent in February.
Exhibits.
As usual a room will be available for exhibits, displays and publication sales.
Auction.
We plan to have another, more limited, auction of books and sundial items. It there is anything you would like to be included please let me know.
Booking form.
Please return the yellow booking form with your full payment by 1 March 2008.
Doug Bateman
Most readers will know that ‘Mrs Gatty’s Book of Sun-Dials’ is an indispensible source for anyone researching old British sundials, particularly where mottoes are concerned. Copies of this book, originally published in the late 1800s and running to a posthumous 4th edition, are now rather expensive and have to be sought-out in secondhand bookshops. Now there is news, courtesy of Fred Sawyer, that it is being reprinted, in both paperback and hard cover editions and at a reasonable price, by Kessinger Publishing LLC. It can be found on the Amazon website (but with an address too long to quote here!).
As a female author, Mrs Gatty has attracted the interests of various women’s groups and they currently have a project to make the book available online. A full facsimile version is already available and a good fraction of the text has been transcribed into an electronic version (which will make searching easier).
See http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/gatty/sundials/sundials.html
and http://merrigold.livejournal.com/74360.html to see how far they have got.
Thanks to Michael Harley for this information.
The second edition of Jill Wilson’s Biographical Index of British Sundial Makers should be advertised elsewhere in this issue. This time it has a considerable number of illustrations, particularly of the signatures of dial makers. This has already proven useful, allowing an unreadable signature to be decoded by comparison with a less-badly weathered one. Since work is already in hand compiling a 3rd edition (though not for a few years!) please send in pictures of any signatures you come across to add to the database.
John Davis
"Further Information Requested…"
Dial recording can be a frustrating business! Not least when you come across a dial when least expecting to do so. Almost all of our Recorders will have experienced this at some time and been faced with the desire to record a dial yet not be able to say much, or sometimes anything, about it. There may only be some minor detail that cannot be ascertained or it may be that all we can really say is that there is a dial there!
For some time now, when Dial Record forms like this drop across my desk, I have taken to adding at the end of the description, Further information requested. By using this standard phrase every time it is possible to search the database for all such dials. We currently have no fewer than 151 such entries and it would be nice if their missing details could be cleared up over time.
Take SRN 5833.
A private dial in a garden near the church in Hadleigh, Suffolk. It is on its own capital which is, in turn, placed on top of a nice baluster pedestal. It can be glimpsed through a glazed archway yet that tantalising image is all we have of it. Recorder John Davis even wrote asking to view it but no reply was received.
Or take SRN 5077.
Piers Nicholson recorded this one on Ashton House in Ashton Keynes, Wiltshire and here the only unrecorded detail is the declination. However, the dial has an unsupported rod gnomon and the hour lines are not drawn to the horizon line so it’s hard to know from a photograph just what is the declination of this dial. Local examination to establish the position of the substyle line is needed.
Or take SRN 5100.
Another private dial, this time in Church Lane, Ampney Crucis Gloucestershire. Spotted by Tony Wood, this dial has a missing gnomon so only the plate can be glimpsed and that side on. It is on a most elaborately carved pedestal and it is tantalising to feel that an equally excellent dial plate may be on it. Sadly we currently do not know.
And so it goes on, one hundred and fifty one times!! When you are next out and about and interested to look at dials, do have a look first in your Register to see if any nearby ones are marked Further information requested. You could be doing the dialling community a great service by solving a mystery or two.
A New Registrar!
As all must be aware by now, after ten years in the role of Registrar, I am handing over the Register to John Foad and this, the 37th issue, is my last Register Ramblings. I have much enjoyed looking after the Register and I would like to thank all those who have made it so interesting for me over the years.
Although John is already up to speed and entering some of the inevitable backlog into the database, the formal hand over will take place at the end of this calendar year so, from January 1st 2008 please send your Dial Report Forms to Mr J Foad, Greenfields, Crumps Lane, Ulcombe. Kent ME17 1EX.
Patrick Powers
16 Moreton Avenue, Harpenden, Herts, AL5 2ET
Mass dials are GO at the moment. We have someone in Sussex doing an M.A. in mass dials - and could I help. We are currently helping each other and hopefully getting Sussex thoroughly covered as a consequence.
The archiving of mass dials is agreed by Council and the records are to be held at York. Full details will be published when the whole arrangement is finalised but we should then have everything in one place for once - and safe and secure.
The usual trickle of dials reported by members and non-members alike. The most unusual recently is a report from the Western Isles of Scotland of SIX dials in one church all on window sills. This has turned out to be an architect's conceit from around 1912 but they will still be recorded as we have already recognised a category 'modern mass/scratch dials' - they are all really scratch dials as they don't have any connection with a service of mass.
A really big 'thank you' to Jane Martin in charge at Iona Abbey who has gone to great deal of trouble chasing up remote Scottish dials for me
Alison Morrison-Low at the Edinburgh Museum has recently requested a list of Scottish mass dials so I will have to explain carefully about the six new ones doubling our records for Scotland!
I found a few in Derbyshire myself and the photographs emphasise the danger of using flash. I think the digital cameras now becoming universal avoid the problem by working in low light conditions quite comfortably - must go digital - soon.
Museums Survey
This will be the last Museums report. All the returns have been sorted into county order and Ian Butson has agreed to edit them into a book/booklet for publication. Any further Museums information OR REQUESTS to me until the end of the year, then to Ian from 2008 onwards.
This has taken four years and thrown up lots of interesting finds and conversations with curators around the UK!
A.O.Wood
01452 712953
We are pleased to welcome five new members, including two from overseas. Mr Jack Aubert hails from Virginia, USA, and Dr Valery Dmitriev deserves a special welcome as our second member from Russia. From nearer home we have Mrs Celia James of Wiltshire, already well known to many members; Dr John Allen from Lothian, and Dr John Gower who lives in Somerset.
Sadly we have lost Dr Bill Flewett from Whitchurch, Shropshire. He was an active member, and some may know his declining vertical dial at Marbury, Cheshire (SRN 4646) – delineated for BST and for its position 2.5 degrees west. His widow Mary has Bulletins for some years back, and would be glad for anyone to have them who can collect them. If you can do that, please let me know and I will put you in touch.
Jackie Jones has kindly volunteered to take over the position of Membership Secretary, and is currently learning the ropes. Full handover will probably be announced in the next Newsletter.
John Foad
01622 858583
Peter Lane, having done an excellent job looking after Society Sales, now needs to leave the post due to a career change. Any member who is willing to take on this important position is urged to contact Peter or Doug Bateman.
Jackie Jones will set up a Society stall at the Brighton Science Week (Saturday 23 February 2008). Anyone who can help with material or in any other way please contact Jackie (jackie.jones51@virgin.net, Tel 01273 673511).
Jill Wilson and Peter Baxendall will join John Davis as judges for the Best New Author prize for 2007.
The second edition of Jill Wilson’s Biographical Index is with the printers.
The first draft of ‘Mrs Crowley’s Sketchbooks of Devon and Cornwall Sundials’ is with the AHS for proofreading (see September newsletter).
Plans are under way to move to a new web hosting company, supporting both MS Front Page and Expression Web.
Negotiations continue with the Borthwick Institute at York University, about them providing storage for our mass dials archives (see September Newsletter).
It is important for all members to remember the conditions under which copies of the Registers are provided. These are clearly stated at the foot of the contents page. Crucially, copyright is vested in the Society, and the Register shall not be lent, re-sold or otherwise circulated without the consent of Council.
Dial restoration is one of the most valuable services provided by society members. All restorers are urged to let Graham Aldred know of completed commissions, which are recorded in the Society’s books.
John Foad
The BSS Photo Competition will be run again this year. It is open to paid up Individual and Family Members of the Society and will be strictly judged according to the rules.
Entry forms and details of the Competition are available from Patrick Powers, 16 Moreton Avenue, Harpenden, Herts. AL5 2ET and will be available soon via the Society Web Site. Entries will only be accepted when accompanied by a completed 2007 Entry form.
The Competition will close on 28th February 2008 and announcement of the winning entries will be made at the Society’s Annual Conference in 2008.
Recent Additions.
Here are some titles of the sixteen books added to the Library recently.
Cornish Church Sundials by Len Burge, a catalogue with chapters and appendices on dialling theory and the background to dialling in Cornwall. It is arranged in one dial per page format, with one excellent photograph, table of technical details and some descriptive text.
The Astronomical Observatories of Jai Singh by G.R.Kaye, this is a reprint (1973) of the 1918 edition. It gives the definitive description and analysis of the sundials and instruments made by Jai Singh. Many diagrams, figures and tables and photographs of modest quality.
The Art of Dialling by the Gnomical* Scale by Samuel Sturmy. This is the sixth facsimile in the ShadowCatchers series by NASS. It was originally published in the Mariners Magazine, 1678. It covers use of the dialling scale for various types of dial. * as original spelling by Sturmy!
Hartmann's Practika: A manual for making sundials and astrolabes with the compass and the rule. Written from 1518 to 1528. This facsimile was published in 2002. John Lamprey has redrawn hundreds of geometrical figures and translated the text from German into modern English. This is a lavish readable work of highest quality.
Crosses of the Peak District by Neville Sharpe. A definitive reference work on Crosses of all types, many of which became sundials after the reformation, well illustrated with many photographs and maps.
These are just a few of the many excellent dialling books and ephemera in the BSS Library. The complete Catalogue is available in BSS style book form at a little over cost price plus postage. (Contact Sales). Members are encouraged to visit the Library and browse! You will be amazed at the books and delighted by the environment. The BSS Reference Library is kept at Bromley House, Nottingham. It is open 5 days a week and some Saturdays. To check details call 0115 9473134 or visit the website www.bromleyhouse.org
It may be noted that the Society only purchased 3 of these 16 books at a total cost of £79, the others were all generous gifts to the Society by members or were donated by reviewers. So if members do feel that there are any books or pamphlets that they can bear to part with I would be very glad to help them!
Graham Aldred.
Available in time for Christmas and labelled as the 'BSS Monograph No 2' it is the new and updated 'Biographical Index of British Sundial Makers - 7th Century to 1920'.
This is a significant update on the first version with almost double the amount of sundial makers listed. As opposed to simply adding to the index, further information relating to some of those makers featured in the first edition has also been added. More illustrations with portraits, trade cards and signatures relating to the makers are also provided. Other individuals connected with dialling are also included, ranging from mathematicians and theorists to owners dials who may have been responsible for delineating their own dial for a local craftsman to make. Finally, an appendix provides charts giving some sequences of masters and apprentices in the London guilds.
The prices are as follows - UK £17 - EU £18.50 - RoW- £19.50 includes postage and packing.
If you wish to order, please complete the application form on the BBS Website in the Books and Publications Section and send to Peter Lane, 7 Woodland Road, Forest Town, Nottinghamshire, NG19 0EN.
Newsletter 2 and Booking Forms have now been sent to all who have shown an interest in joining our Safari. If you have not received yours please let me know. Deposits are required before 10 January. Late bookings will only be accepted if space is available.
Mike Cowham