Tag Archives: sun

Two sundials on a church in Hitchin (Hertfordshire)

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HITCHIN IS A delightful place to visit in Hertfordshire. It has a pleasant town centre with plenty of picturesque old buildings. Near the town square, stands the church of St Mary, which was constructed during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Its tower has two sundials.

The two sundials are next to each other but face in different directions: one southeast, and the other southwest. The southeast dial carries the date 1660 and the words “Anno Salutis”. It celebrates the year that the monarchy was restored after Oliver Cromwell’s Commonwealth ended and Charles II became King of England.

I wondered why the church has two sundials next to each other. From what I could glean from the Internet, it seems that one dial catches the morning light better than the other, and the second one works best in the afternoon light. A website (https://sundialsoc.org.uk/wp_bridol/pages/S4/S4036.html)  explained that the dial bearing the date 1660:

“Shows time 5am to noon in 30 & 15 min marks. Noon marked with cross.”

The other sundial, that facing southwest, comes into its own after noon. There might be other examples of paired sundials, but this is the first I have spotted.

Using the sun to tell the time

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THIS IS A SUNDIAL at Oxburgh Hall in Norfolk . Only useful when the sun shines, which is not always the case in England. According to Wikipedia, that wonderful source of knowledge whose reliability is often good, the earliest known sundials date from 1500 BC. These were discovered by archaeologists working in Egypt. Oxburgh Hall was built largely in the late 15th century.

A gnomon on the esplanade

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FOR THOSE WHO DO NOT know, a gnomon is the part of a sundial that casts a shadow.

The gnomon on the Esplanade at Ventnor

In 1851, Sir Thomas Brisbane (1773-1860), who gave his name to a city in Australia, donated a tall gnomon to the town of Ventnor on the Isle of Wight. In sunny conditions, this object casts a shadow on a line marked on the pavement at noon GMT (1 pm BST). Sir Thomas had spent some time in Ventnor during the mid-19th century, and sadly his daughter Eleanor Australia MakDougall Brisbane died in Ventnor in 1852 at the young age of 29.

As we are discovering during our visit to the Isle of Wight, the sun does not always shine in Ventnor (or anywhere else on the island). Recognising this problem that renders the gnomon useless when the sun is not shining, the town erected a short clock tower near to the gnomon in 1870. This clock was rebuilt in 2001. It bears a plaque commemorating Fred Blake (1924-2001), who, along with his father (Adolphus) and grandfather (James), were: “… proud to maintain this barometer for over 120 years”.

We did not see the gnomon working because of cloudy weather conditions, and the two faces of the clocks displayed different times and neither of them appeared to be working. The barometer seemed to be working. It is curious features such as the gnomon that help make towns on the English coast endlessly fascinating.