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Extracts from the Society's NewsletterRegister Notes for June 2009 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? There are two dials in the Register at Pinkie House but
neither fit the description of a 'wall sundial'. John Foad Register Notes for March 2009 One of the great strengths of the Register, and of the Archive which supports it, lies in the library of pictures that we hold. In fact we have a photograph (and sometimes several views) for an amazing 4,000 of our 6,000 recorded dials, a tribute to our ever growing band of active recorders. But it is clear when you survey the counties that some are better represented than others. The prize winning counties in this respect, with photographs for over ninety percent of the recorded dials, are Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Essex, Dyfed, Hertfordshire, Oxfordshire and Suffolk. This may not be too surprising, they being on the whole areas where a fair proportion of our members live. More unexpected perhaps is the list of counties with the greatest number (not percentage) of unphotographed dials, headed by Cornwall, Cumbria, Gloucestershire and Devon, each with over 100 recorded dials that still await a picture. And they are some glorious counties for a Credit Crunch UK holiday this year. Just check the Register before you go! (Note, these statistics are from the current files, not from the 2005 Registers. If you want an updated list for any particular area, please let me know.) John Foad Register Notes for December 2008 First a big thank you to several members who have responded to my request for details of ‘Dials Not In The Register’! I now have, or will shortly have, the information I need on Gidea Park, Elmwood Cottages, Chris Daniel’s Millennium dial at Greenwich, the Shiremoor dial which turns out to be by Tony Moss, and Pontardawe. Does anyone know anything about a large horizontal dial that was once set in the paving in front of the Millennium Dome? It is no longer there, but you can still see it in Google Earth or Google Maps. It was about 100 yards SE of the dome, and measured about 60 yards across. It had a vertical ‘pin’ gnomon, the tip being the nodus. I would much appreciate news of the designer. You may have seen in the Bulletin that we have had some recent successes in recovering stolen dials. In an attempt to build on this, we will soon be listing stolen dials on the Society web site. Please keep an eye out for this, and if you spot a dial in an auction catalogue, on eBay, or in an antique shop or salvage yard, that looks at all suspicious, just check out if it is on our list. Secondly, and very importantly, if you know of a dial being stolen, please ensure that it is reported to the police, and let me have the details, including the ‘Crime Reference Number’ that the Police will allocate. I can then get the theft on the Police list, which is used by the major auction houses, and which will soon be circulated world-wide. Newsflash on Stolen Dials: An important Delander Double Horizontal (SRN 3607, which you will find in the Register listed under Northampton), was stolen on 27 October. If you see or hear of any dial that could be it, please get in touch immediately. John Foad Register Notes for September 2008 Browsing the internet I am always coming across old and new dials that are not in the Register. If you are feeling like an expedition, would you care to track down one or more of these? Dials not in the Register A large 19th century horizontal on a fine baluster pedestal at
Ditchley Park, Spelsbury, Oxfordshire. Then some more modern ones: Chris Daniel’s Millennium Sundial on the north side of the
boating pool near the gate in Park Row, Greenwich. Not yet in
the Register! John Foad Register Notes for June 2008 John Foad Register Notes for March 2008 And I (JF) would add 11 To add information – measurements, inscriptions, furniture. Many early records were of the ‘dial seen’ class, with little detail noted. So although ‘the BSS Registrar’ has more than enough to do (!) I would urge you to take advantage of the sunny months ahead, and head for the open road, with camera, notebook and a copy of the Register. John Foad |
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Register Ramblings – Mar 2007 A Prop or Not? It’s all BSS Member Peter Baxandall’s fault! There I was thinking that we had just about recorded all the dials in and around the stately homes of Britain when Peter and his wife sat down to watch the excellent film version of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice – the one where Keira Knightley stars as Elizabeth Bennett. There, in scene 12 of the DVD, Elizabeth runs out of Pemberley onto the rear terrace and, in turning to go down the steps we see, on the end of the balustrade, an exquisite horizontal dial with this elaborately pierced gnomon. Now in the film, Chatsworth is used to represent D’Arcy’s house, Pemberley and the suggestion is that maybe this dial is indeed at Chatsworth. Trouble is, no such dial is currently recorded by us as being at Chatsworth. Furthermore, if it is there, how could it have escaped our collective attention for so long? Of course, that particular scene might easily have been shot at any one of the other venues used by the film maker or the dial may simply have been placed there as a prop. The background to the action certainly looks like Chatsworth and so does the garden that can be seen behind the actors. Furthermore, Chatsworth itself lies almost exactly aligned North-South - just as suggested by the alignment of the gnomon with the balustrade and the building in the film. That certainly does not suggest that it was a film prop. Well spotted Peter! Now, can anyone tell me if there is indeed such a dial at Chatsworth or do we need to look elsewhere to find it?
Register Ramblings – Dec 2006 Bring out your Pictures! A bit ‘off topic’ I know, but since I am organising this year’s Photo Competition I thought I’d take a bit of licence with this edition of Register Ramblings… I’d like to draw the attention of Members to the 2006 BSS Photo Competition and to invite as many as possible to submit an entry. The Competition will be judged in early 2007 and the results will be announced and winning entries displayed at the Cambridge Conference. The competition will close on 28th February 2007 It is open to all current Members and Family Members of the British Sundial Society and each photograph MUST contain a sundial or other closely related object. Competitors may submit up to three entries and a separate Entry Form must accompany each print. A copy of the 2006 Entry form and Rules was included with the last Bulletin but extra copies may be downloaded (PDF file) here. Less Depressing Mottoes? – Well, there are some! The Register records more than 1250 dials having one or more mottoes. As we all know, by far the majority of these are depressing and foretell doom and even one’s imminent demise. However there are some which whilst they may have the same broad ‘theme’ are nevertheless interesting, thoughtful and sometimes even funny. Here are just a few English mottoes that I think a little out of the ordinary. I have included their SRNs so that those Members with Registers might be able to trace these excellent examples.
Register Ramblings – Sep 2006 Pictures and their value… It is often said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Now, in order to stop everyone writing in to say I have got it wrong, I should confirm that this saying, first made by Frederick Barnard (an advertising manager), gave a value of ten thousand words rather than one thousand, but we shall let that pass. As Members will know, the two volume printed edition of Register 2005 has all its images printed, one-sided on pages of image quality paper that are at the back of each volume. This is necessary to keep costs down and in the years since the first ‘Register with images’ was produced in 2000 very few people have commented on the presence or absence of images for any particular dial. I feel moved to reflect now on the matter of pictures and their value because the CDROM edition of Register 2005, uniquely among the available editions, has its dial pictures set alongside the dial’s text entry and this in turn has moved an unprecedented number (well, several!) members to write or e-mail me to say that they have or can get, pictures of some of the listed dials which are better than those in the Register or even that they can get pictures where none currently exists in the Register. Now, the images printed in the Registers are those stored in the database. They are not, of course, the sum total of images of the dials held in our archive although any one in the Register may well have been taken from images submitted with forms. The key thing is that photos and transparencies submitted with a form are recorded in such a way that we can trace the date and author of each sighting. Photos held in the database on the other hand simply represent the best and/or most recent image of a dial. No record is made of the photographer nor of the date of the image and indeed there may be images of dials held on the database where no photograph exists in the archive. All this means that there is a much more relaxed approach taken regarding the digital images held in the database and this in turn means that whereas we cannot accept digital images for formal sightings it is possible for us to accept digital images for inclusion in the database. However, do please note that because no record of author will be kept you should only submit images for which you are happy to lose your copyright. All submitted images will thereafter be the copyright of BSS. Any Member wishing to send in images in this way should submit them to me on CDROM (NOT e-mail) and adhering STRICTLY to the following format: All submitted photographs should, as far as possible, be ones having a quality such that they could be used, if ever it proved necessary, to make a duplicate of the dial in question. All submitted image files should be in JPG format, limited to a maximum image size of 500kB, with the image cropped to just show the dial itself and with the image file name set to the following format. As an example, for a first image of a dial having the BSS Reference SRN1234 the image file should be named S1234.jpg. If a second image is being submitted of the same dial (eg of faces of a cube dial) then this should have the file name S1234a.jpg. Others should be named S1234b.jpg, S1234c.jpg etc. Note again though that if only a single image is supplied then it should not have any suffix letters to its filename. By adhering strictly to this methodology the process of image comparison and import into the database is rendered much easier. Currently our member Peter Meadows holds the accolade of having submitted images that most closely adhere to the above such that I was able to make an almost instant transfer to the database. Can you match that?
Register Ramblings – June 2006 The CDROM Edition of Register 2005 At last, the CD edition of Register 2005 has now been distributed to all who ordered it. This edition represents a bit of a milestone for the Society, since it is the first edition of the Register to contain much, if not all, of the material about a dial that is held here by the Registrar. It contains not only the same textual information as is provided by the full printed editions (but with the thumbnails alongside the entries on the screen) but it also contains many of the originally submitted recording forms sent in by Members. Not only that, but the thumbnail images themselves may be magnified on screen many times so that details may be examined. For reasons of cost, the Society was only able to publish printed editions of the Register to order, but in the case of the CD edition some spare copies were made which have been placed into stock. Members wishing to obtain a copy of the new CD Edition can do so by contacting Peter Lane (BSS Sales) in the usual way. Non-member sightings of dials Sometimes we get sightings of dials submitted to us by persons who are not members of the Society. These may be from those who know of the Society’s existence and send in details and a photograph or two. Where the details are sufficient, a form is completed and we record the entry in the database. In order to ensure that a Member perusing the Register may be alerted to the fact that the sighting was made by a non-member, we use a Membership number of "000/". The sequence number that follows is incremented for each such submitted report, regardless of who submits it. There are some 65 of these in the Register today. However, sometimes the non-member is a friend of a Member and the sighting is sent to the Society by that Member. Some earlier non-member entries of this type have indeed been entered in the manner described above but in more recent times, and in order to reflect the fact that the Member has, in effect, verified the entry and included it in his own submission sequence, a suffix of ‘n’ is now applied to the sequence number. Currently there are some 232 of these in Register 2005. Using this notation easily allows a reader of the Register to recognise that the sighting was made by a non-member yet submitted under the auspices of a Society recorder.
Register Ramblings – March 2006 |
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Should we or Shouldn’t we? – the sequel! Readers may remember that in the last Ramblings I discussed the question of whether or not the Register might be extended to have some mechanism by which an historic dial’s original nominal Imperial dimensions could be recorded. Now, as in most branches of life, questions asked in Newsletters rarely result in any, let alone many, replies. This Newsletter is no different. However this time and on this question I did receive some replies – not many it is true – but replies nonetheless! All were in favour of recording Imperial measurements where these are likely to have been used in the original design. That’s the easy part! The hard part is to implement it, especially if it were to be proposed to make some back calculation of the likely nominal Imperial measurements from the existing metric ones. To do a back conversion is not as easy as might be supposed especially since the dimension field in the database can contain more than one measurement and even include text. We have entries like 225 a/f octagon, 1350 diam, 600 x 400 all dials, 5400 x 4500 ellipse or even 500h x 460w (guess); to say nothing of the occasional large dial being dimensioned in metres rather than mm. It may therefore only be possible to provide a new field into which newly reported Imperial dimensions may be entered. However the abilities of MS Access and its partner Excel are wondrous to behold (and use) so watch this space. No promises, but it may yet be possible to do something to improve the display of dimensions in the Register - even if it does take quite a while to achieve. The CDROM Edition of Register 2005 Those Members who ordered printed editions of the new Register will already have received them. However there has been a further delay in the preparation of the CDROM edition owing to a strange failure in the Society’s computer last November. This had the effect of interfering with the proper operation of the anti virus system though the Firewall was and is, entirely unaffected. The PC is again operational and safe and it is hoped that work on the first CDROM edition of Register 2005 will resume shortly and that, after extensive double external checking for viruses, it can soon be supplied to all those who have ordered it. My apologies to all those who may have been inconvenienced by this delay but I am sure that you will appreciate the need for caution. I do hope you will not have to wait much longer.
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Register Ramblings – December 2005 |
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It’s sometimes quite difficult to decide whether or not to record a particular dial. If a Member has gone to the trouble of recording details of a dial when, upon examination, it seems that the dial cannot possibly tell the time correctly, what should one do? The matter is made even more difficult if there are times of day when the dial in question might actually tell Local Apparent Time. In these circumstances I have generally taken the position that if a dial can tell the time at some point in the day then it should be recorded as a dial. After all there are plenty of wrongly delineated dials. Take two such that came to me within a short period of each other – both in Gloucestershire and both found by Tony Wood. SRN 5283 is an horizontal dial at the Perry Almshouses & Chapel, Church Street in Wootton under Edge in Gloucestershire. A strange attempt at a dial. The gnomon is in the form of an inclined bulrush protruding from reeds with a tortoise sculpture by its side. The dialplate is marked around its edge with numerals like a clock but with a 24 hour scale. Only noon is correctly marked and the dial can therefore only show Noon. Yet as well as the neatly engraved numerals the inner part of dialplate is engraved with multiple concentric grooves. A lot of work for apparently little purpose. Then take SRN 5285, another Gloucestershire dial and also one found by Tony. This is an 18thC V(S) dial canted to the West to face South on St Mary the Virgin's church at Marshfield, over the porch door. With this dial there are several difficulties! The dialplate shows lines above the horizon line and the origins of the am and pm hours are vertically displaced as well as being separated horizontally. A later gnomon does not properly accommodate the split Noon line and its current origin is incorrect for either am or pm. It is clear there have been two dials here at one time. The dial is ‘delineated’ to show 4am to 8pm (!) in hours with a possible half hour line at 6.30pm. Yet despite all these problems the numerals in the chapter ring are not duplicated or apparently over written. It would be nice to know some of the history of both of these faulted, yet very interesting dials. Well worth recording – if only to bring them to some future dial historian’s attention. Can anyone help? Should we or Shouldn’t we? Here’s a contentious question! The Register is currently set up to record dial measurements etc. in metric units yet by far the majority of the dials on record were designed and constructed in Imperial units. Thus we get oddities like a 12 inch diameter horizontal dial being recorded as having a diameter of 300mm (when of course, if that dimension was 12 ins ±1/16th inch then strictly, it should be recorded as between 303 and 306 mm). The problem is not in the actual recording of a dial’s accurate dimensions – that is always possible. No, the problem is in how to record its nominal dimensions. A dial that clearly was designed to have a nominal diameter of (say) 12 inches cannot also have an easily expressed nominal metric diameter. What should we do? Carry on as now? - so often with a faulted metric measure or somehow, find a way to record the original nominal Imperial measurements - perhaps in addition to the current metric measure. I certainly believe that we need to adopt some policy by which we do not lose sight of the original design parameters of our dial heritage and I am considering the pros and cons of making some changes to the database to permit such things to be recorded. I would appreciate Members’ comments – especially in the light of the draconian EU legislation that appears set to be inflicted (my view!) on us by default in 2007 despite the fact that only a few months ago a national survey found no fewer than 80% of the UK population keen to retain Imperial measures alongside metric equivalents. I await Members’ input with interest! |
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Register Ramblings – September 2005 |
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It is the quiet part of the year for the Register just now, although, this year, there is a difference because of the ongoing activity to publish the various editions of the 2005 Register. Despite the obvious urgency, the process of checking and editing the various entries can be quite diverting and one’s attention can easily be distracted to dwell on some interesting snippet or another. Sometimes the unusual nature of a Register entry is not a consequence of anything to do with the dial but with the building. Take SRN 1233 for example; an excellently preserved Direct South dial with the motto "Umbra Sumus". This dial was first installed in 1743, high on the gable end of a church at the corner of Brick Lane and Fournier Street in Spitalfields, London. Around that time, Brick Lane was a long well-paved street, frequented by carts fetching bricks into Whitechapel and the area was increasingly inhabited by Huguenot refugees fleeing persecution in France and the church on the corner was their church. In 1809, it became a Wesleyan chapel and about 90 years later it was converted into the Spitalfields Great Synagogue for the Orthodox Jewish community that, by then, had moved into the area. What happened to Meristic? About 20 or so years ago a company signing itself Meristic, made quality, modern horizontal dials in the UK. There are just two of these dials recorded in the Register at the moment; one in the parish of St Ouen in Jersey and the other in Snape in Suffolk. Both are complicated dials with sigmoidal gnomons, dual chapter rings, the motto: "Thou by the dial's shady stealth mayst know time's thievish progress to eternity" and an EoT graph at the South side. They are signed with the date, the phrase "© crafted by Mersitic" and this is followed by the latitude of the place where they are sited. Ian Butson has recently come across a third example of these dials – though I have no details of it as yet - and he has asked me if we know of others and whether the company is still in existence. I have checked the Internet and Companies House – all to no avail. The Jersey owner of one of these dials believes he bought it through mail order. Does any Member have any information on the company or about their dials? Are any other examples known of their work? It may be that they did more than make dials because meristic is a biological adjective meaning "having or composed of segments; segmented" and it’s tempting to think that the name could describe a company involved in several market sectors. |
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Register Ramblings – June 2005 |
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Procrastination
has its day…
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Register Ramblings – March 2005 |
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Work continues apace here at the Registry to enter the latest spate of submissions of dial sighting forms recently received from Members. At the time of writing there were only relatively few left to enter but, as happened with the 2000 Register, it may still be necessary to publish without all recent contributions being entered. Thanks to all who have sent in contributions to make the next edition the most up to date ever. For those who may be interested, a reminder that the contact URL for checking that your expression of interest in purchasing one or more copies of the forthcoming Register has been properly logged is: http://go.ourworld.nu/patrick_powers/reg2005.htm
Readers may like to know that our esteemed Treasurer, John Davis, has now the (dubious) privilege of joining John Lester as the second of that very select band of our recorders to have identified a dial which is in one County though in a town which is in another! A true Registrar’s nightmare, since the whole Register is oriented by county and anything like this causes considerable confusion. As I mentioned in a Ramblings of 2001, John Lester was the first to alert me to the fact that Burford House, and its nearby village of Burford, both happen to be in Shropshire yet the postal address of Burford House is actually Tenbury Wells in Worcestershire! A particular nonsense, since Burford House and its village are both across the river from Tenbury Wells! Now I have John Davis informing me that there is a dial in Bures in Suffolk, when my gazetteer indicates that, following the county reorganisation of 2001, Bures is now in Essex. Once again the dial in question is across the river in what is otherwise Suffolk, but, because the river divides the town into two and additionally is the county boundary, any non-local with a modern road map and looking in the Register for dials in Bures would probably think to look in Essex. Two anomalies in several thousand dial records is perhaps not too serious a problem but it might be sensible to find a way of providing entries under both counties in these cases. For reasons of data integrity, the database actually prevents a second mention of a dial having the same SRN, so some subterfuge may be needed to accomplish this. Although not completely resolved, the idea of a second series of dial IDs which simply references the ‘real’ dial entry seems to be a likely solution. To repeat my request first made in 2001, if anyone knows of any more of these county ‘anomalies’ would they please get in touch? After all, I am sure that the two Johns could do with some company! |
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Register Ramblings - December 2004 |
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The Fixed Dial Register - 2005 Interest in the forthcoming Fixed Dial Register has certainly been rewarding. At the last count we have expressions of interest from 89 people between them expressing interest in no fewer than 159 copies: Full
Register North Edition – 25 Anyone interested to see the details and to confirm that their form has been received should point their browser at: http://go.ourworld.nu/patrick_powers/reg2005.htm If you have submitted a form and cannot see your Membership number on the above web site, do please contact me as soon as possible. If you have not yet submitted a form and still wish to do so there is still some time left – courtesy of those who, over the past months, have sent in a flurry of further sightings which I am still trying to enter before we go to press. No promises but at the present rate of entry I still expect to be able to go to press early in January. Final prices will be known when all data has been entered and we can obtain quotations. Then, all those who have expressed interest will be contacted with the confirmed price for their choice and after all the expressions of interest have been converted into firm orders, printing will begin. Humour in sundial mottoes? "Really?", I hear everyone say! Well, it’s certainly true that with only rare exceptions the sundial motto is almost invariably about dispensing doom and gloom. How else can you classify ones like these?: As the day runs so death comes (eg SRN 2803) Night Cometh (eg SRN 3420) Prepare to meet thy God (eg SRN 2613) So soon passeth it away & we are gone (eg SRN 0461) But one does sometimes come across amusingly apt mottoes on dials in certain places. Take the case of SRN 4961 purchased from a Northants hospital as it closed. The dial had stood in the hospital grounds proclaiming the motto "Every Hour Shortens Life". One is inclined to wonder if the hospital in question closed for reasons of lack of custom…! Editor’s note: I noticed a nice one in David Harber’s Order Form: QUANTO PUTAS MIHI STRARE HOC HOROLOGIUM How much do you think I paid for this sundial? |
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Register Ramblings - September 2004 The New Mass Dial Database The good news this month is that the new Mass Dial Database is up and running at last! Under Beta testing at the time of writing, it was scheduled to be handed over to Tony Wood at the end of August. The system also includes automated conversions of the 1100+ detailed dial records from the Edward Martin database which this new system now replaces. Like the Fixed Dial Database, the new system is based on Access XP and it applies a commonality of approach so that (for example) Recorders will be able to request summaries of their sightings as well as listings of dials in the various counties. Tony has a considerable backlog of material to enter and the use of automatic conversion of the earlier data means that there is a still some verification to do, so don’t expect a published Register of Mass Dials just yet! The Registers and Copyright Law Readers will know that the UK law of Copyright was changed last October by the implementation of the far-reaching EU Directive ‘2001/29/EC’. This brings in the need to obtain a licence for any copy that is made for any sort of eventual commercial purpose and, for UK material, the establishment of a licensing agency (The CLA). Accordingly the Society’s policy and rules regarding submission of material to either Register have been updated to stress that the Society cannot accept photographs and drawings copied from other works within a period of 70 years from the (last) death of the author(s) unless direct permission has first been obtained from the current copyright owner or for which a valid licence, encompassing eventual publication by BSS, has been obtained from the CLA. Copies of the new Policy and Guidelines may be obtained from Patrick Powers. Recorders submitting their own photographs and/or their own drawings or copies drawn from works where the copyright has expired, are of course not affected by this update. Fixed Dial Register - 2005 As announced at Oxford and in the last Newsletter, a new edition of the Fixed Dial Register is to be published for 2005. Expressions of Interest from all those who wish (or might wish!) to purchase should have been sent in to me by August 31st . However because of various delays that have occurred we shall be able to accept expressions of interest up to (and even at!) the Newbury Meeting in September. If you have mislaid the form enclosed with the June Bulletin, a spare one may be obtained either from me or from the web site given below. Receipt of forms is not being individually acknowledged, but a list of the BSS Membership Numbers of those Members who have submitted a form is held on: http://go.ourworld.nu/patrick_powers/reg2005.htm If you have submitted a form and cannot see your Membership number on the above web site, do please contact me as soon as possible. Patrick Powers, 16 Moreton Avenue, Harpenden, Herts, AL5 2ET |
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Register Ramblings - June 2004 Important
Announcement about the Fixed Dial Register - 2005 Moreover, as the Register is a dynamic entity it is never ‘complete’. Data entry proceeds all the time and the editions that will be published will be based upon a dataset that will be as up to date as possible. All this means that we cannot say now exactly how big the new Register will be or even exactly how much it will cost. Nevertheless we can give some indications and it is from these that we should now like to receive Expressions of Interest on the form that is included with this Newsletter. There is no obligation at this stage. However, there will be no other general mailing to Members regarding this so this is the time to make your interest known. Completed forms should be sent to me at the address below and arrive before 31st August 2004. Later in the year, when prices etc have been confirmed, those who have sent in such forms will be contacted so that they may place a firm order. Receipt of forms will not be individually acknowledged but a list of the BSS Membership Numbers of those Members who have submitted a form will be held on http://go.ourworld.nu/patrick_powers/reg2005.htm If you have submitted a form and cannot see your Membership number on the above web site please contact me. The Fixed Dial Register 2005 will be published in the following versions:
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Register Ramblings - March 2004 The Cat Removed from the Pigeons…? It’s a pity that this Newsletter cannot yet reproduce images – even black and white ones - because it would have been useful in explaining the way in which the Register was recently used to solve an unusual and potentially quite difficult request. As everyone will expect, I receive quite a few requests for information about dials and makers and about the relative incidence of some specific features of dials like mottos or gnomon endings etc., but a little while ago I was sent the following ‘nightmare’ e-mail which really set the cat among the pigeons here at the BSS Dial Registry!… This is an unusual request. A friend sent me this holiday photo of a sundial, knowing that I would be interested. Unfortunately, he couldn't remember where he took it! I wonder whether it might be in the Register. All the information I have is the photo itself (see attachment) and the friend's guess that it may have been in East Anglia. The motto and the names of the churchwardens may be a clue. Can you help me? Now, Members will know that whilst databases are very good at storing and retrieving factual data they are not at all good at image recognition! Indeed, we cannot (yet!) conduct any form of image recognition per se. So, when you consider that currently we have well over 2000 images of sundials on the database (and many thousands more in the archive) this sort of request is the hardest that we can receive. Still, over the past years successive Registrars have tried to record more and more written detail of dials and it was worth trying to see if I had recorded the names of the Church Wardens mentioned on the dial. The photograph that was attached was of a declining dial in the shade. It has a ‘break-arch’ shape with added marble scrolls at the sides. In the arch is a motto and at the bottom are the names of two churchwardens. The only visible name is that of ‘Plowright’. A search for this showed absolutely nothing! The motto at the top was almost impossible to read too but it was clearly of some length, possibly of three words and also clearly had the Latin word ‘et’ in the middle. I guessed that it might be 'Pereunt et Imputantur' or some such (which is a common motto) and so did a search on that with an added requirement that the dial should be declining. This threw up eight possible dials, one close one being SRN 4202 in Cambridgeshire but fortunately I have a photo of that on the database and could eliminate it. I then tried the next one, SRN 3604 (St Mary’s Church, Pinchbeck, Lincs – perhaps not quite in East Anglia after all) and bingo.... the text description clinched it even though I didn't have a photo. Interestingly, the database entry did mention the churchwardens’ names but I found that when I had made the original database entry I had entered the name as Ploughright and not Plowright – having taken the wrong spelling from the original form even though the recorder had actually corrected himself before sending it in!! It just goes to show how careful I need to be when reading submitted report forms!!. The dial
is doubly interesting since it has a nodus and seven declination
lines though it seems to have deteriorated since first reported in
1996. Authorised BSS Dial Recorders Although most of our recorders do not have any particular problem in making contact with dial owners, some recorders have occasionally indicated that sometimes it would have been convenient for them to have some form of document that might identify them to a dial owner as a bona fide recorder for the Society. At their last meeting the Council approved in principle the idea of making such identification available and, on a trial basis, experienced BSS Recorders (defined for this purpose as those having ten or more dial sightings to their name!) may now request such a card. Anyone interested in receiving such an ID card should send a colour passport, or similar close up photograph to me at the address given in the back of any recent Bulletin. The photograph will be returned with the ID card. It should be noted that unless there is any particular stated urgency for the card, this will NOT be a 'by-return-of-post' service since it is much easier to make up such cards in batches! Patrick Powers |
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Register Ramblings prior to 2004 are still available here. |
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