FROM THE CHAIRMAN
Once again, the annual gathering in Newbury was very successful with a sunny day, good talks and fascinating exhibits. Our thanks are due to David Pawley for making the arrangements. He has already confirmed that there will be another meeting in Newbury next year.
A most notable event this autumn was undoubtedly Mike Shaw’s cameo performance on the Antiques Roadshow on 14th October. A stellar performance notwithstanding the rain!
Our next big set-piece is the 2013 Conference in Edinburgh. Chris Lusby Taylor has been working on what should be an excellent occasion. In the light of the feedback received last year, Council has decided to hold another Discussion Forum and is happy to hear any and all views.
As acting Restoration Adviser, I have become aware of just how many public sundials need attention. Given our limited financial resources, we cannot usefully give financial support to more than a fraction of these dials. Council is considering how the Society’s resources, both expertise and financial, may best be deployed to secure the repair and conservation of as many dials as possible. Given that any financial support involves spending members’ money, this is clearly an appropriate topic to consider at the Discussion Forum.
SECRETARY’S REPORT
As the 2012-13 Council is well into the second half of its term of office, now is a good time to take stock. Your new Council has worked most productively – on both the day to day operational and strategic change fronts. Council is enormously grateful and indebted to the Society’s loyal band of Specialists and Volunteers.
The major operational difficulty encountered during the summer concerned maintenance of our website. We were beset by a cascade of unexpected events. These difficulties have, in the main, been resolved. Maintenance of the existing site has been restored.
Substantial progress on the Society’s new improved website has been achieved. A new site map has been designed and the new site will be structured with built in flexibility. This will make it easier for the site to be further developed or even radically changed if necessary. The substantial work involved is now firmly underway.
As always, we depend on volunteers so it is not possible to give a firm date when the new site will be ready. Progress reports will appear from time to time on the existing website. When the new site has been fully tested there will then be an over-night migration of existing content. Thereafter, we face the ever present challenge of ensuring continued relevance and interest.
A website is only as good as its content and the Society has the potential to make a significant improvement to the content. Council has decided to make available a restricted subset of our dial listings and recordings and has also decided to make available older issues of the Bulletin.
A practical demonstration of a prototype design of website dial listings was made, and very well received, at last September’s Newbury meeting. The ready availability of dial listings, together with Bulletin copy, will broaden further interest in our website and materially advance the education of the public in the science and art of gnomonics – our constitutional raison d’être. As we approach our silver anniversary, there can be no better testament to the collective achievement of present and past generations of members.
The website has been Council’s largest single pre-occupation but there have been two other important matters. First, last year’s membership survey revealed almost universal support for marking our silver anniversary in 2014 by doing something extra and special. We are planning:-
- A three day conference (instead of the usual two) centred on the iconic Greenwich site. The programme and guest speakers are being considered.
- A ‘domestic’ sundial safari, probably based on Oxbridge.
- A special anniversary issue of the Bulletin.
The second matter is alluded to in the Chairman’s message and relates to his experience as the acting Restoration Adviser. In recent years, successive Councils have made very few grants and none have been specifically for educative purposes. The current grants policy has done little to advance the public’s gnomonic education, our primary object, nor saved many dials.
The Chairman’s message also notes that last year’s innovation – the open Discussion Forum – will be repeated at the Edinburgh 2013 conference. It is clear from the above there will be much to review and discuss, not least the grants policy.
Footnote: The email addresses of Council and Specialists, which are published in the Bulletin and on the website, have changed to role based Society addresses (that automatically forward to the relevant personal email addresses). These addresses will be more memorable and prevent our paper based material being operationally obsolete when personnel change. Their use is not obligatory – some might find it more convenient to reply from their personal address – but we now have a more enduring and efficient public face.
BULLETIN EDITOR
Readers may notice that we have new printers for this issue. Hopefully, no major changes to either quality or timeliness will be noticed. Although our old printers, Henry Ling Ltd in Dorchester, did a pretty reasonable job over several years, our new ones, The Lavenham Press Ltd, are much closer to me and significantly cheaper.
With this issue you should receive our traditional ‘solar data’ card for the coming year. We have Fiona Vincent to thank once again for calculating and preparing the data – much more accurate than the averaged values or out-of-date tables that appear in numerous sundial books.
The BBC are making a TV programme to mark the retirement of Rowan Williams as Archbishop of Canterbury, to be screened sometime in December. I am told that somewhere in the programme, perhaps only for a few seconds, the Archbishop will be seen with the famous Canterbury pendant, the subject of a pair of Bulletin articles by Mario Arnaldi earlier in the year.
Mario Arnaldi is also the author of the next BSS monograph (no. 10) which is just being published. Its title is De Cursu Solis – medieval azimuthal sundials and it deals with this rare type of dial as described in a number of medieval manuscripts. I hope that copies will be available in time for Christmas, price £10 + p&p. A full review will be in the next Bulletin.
John Davis
01622 858583
BSS 24th ANNUAL CONFERENCE
Edinburgh 5-7 April 2013
Next year’s conference venue in Edinburgh has now been booked. We will be using the University’s purpose-built John McIntyre Conference Centre overlooking Arthur’s Seat and holding our Gala Dinner in the fabulous Playfair Library. We will stay in Masson House Hotel, adjacent to the Conference Centre. All rooms are double, en-suite.
In order to see as many Scottish sundials as possible, Saturday afternoon will include a visit to the National Museum of Scotland and a walking tour of the Royal Mile area which is rich in sundials.
As usual, the conference is on the weekend after Easter, running from Friday afternoon to Sunday after lunch. If you wish to extend your stay beforehand or afterwards, this can be arranged.
Edinburgh has excellent transport links at very reasonable costs, for instance, flights or trains from Bristol or London for £120 return or less. If you plan to go by train, I advise booking in January and using a Railcard, if you have one.
You may have been put off speaking at the conference because you don’t have half an hour’s worth to say on a subject but would like, perhaps, 5 or 10 minutes. So, as at our Newbury meetings, we’d now like to invite anyone with any topic they’d like aired briefly to let us know. This could be something you’ve discovered, an interesting dial you’d like to publicise, a question you’d like answered, a suggestion, whatever else comes to mind. If you’ve got such a topic, please let the me know by email or phone.
REGISTER
My grateful thanks to all of you who responded to my note in the last Newsletter, where I asked for help in preparing dial descriptions for Bridol (British Dials On Line). As a result, nearly half of the counties have been spoken for, accounting for over 60% of our recorded ‘Open’ dials. That is a magnificent start, but there is still a lot to do, and if you have a little spare time and a Windows PC, please do think about getting in touch. No special knowledge is required, and it is an interesting exercise. Unfortunately my little program that helps with the work does not run on an Apple Mac!
John Davis recently told me about the Heritage Gateway at http://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/. It is organised by county and if you look, for example, at the Kent results, there are 89 hits, from a variety of sources including National Heritage, National Trust, and local records. There are no photographs, but plenty of leads to follow up. (Do not use the ‘Quick Search’ option on the Home page. It is slow, and the results are presented in a long winded way. Use instead the ‘More Detailed Search’, and specify ‘Admin Location’ as ‘Kent’ under ‘Where’, and ‘Sundial’ under ‘What’, and finally click ‘Search’ at the bottom right of the page.)
John Foad
01622 858583
MEMBERSHIP
We have had a number of new members over the last few months and we would like to welcome them to the Society. John Cheetham from Somerset; Peter Costain from Kent; Alan Parker from Monmouthshire. and Stephen Holehan, a professional sundial maker from Leeds.
Regrettably, we have to announce the death of three members. Graham Lobley died in August; John Hayden died in October as did John Wall.
MASS DIAL MEANDERINGS
A busy quarter with dials flooding in.
Norfolk is being very well covered as we have two people out there: ‘Lyn Stilgoe has sent in her annual haul of dials, now in digital and so upgrading some previous records. Ian Butson has completed his survey of Norfolk and it is interesting to compare and contrast his pictures and records with ‘Lyn’s. Both seem to have been blessed with a sunnier summer than I remember but Ian had to abandon recording at one church owing to ‘torrential rain’.
Incidentally, up in Derbyshire I discovered that wet stonework photographs quite well and one can get a decent dial picture, with luck, even in the rain.
Back in Norfolk, David Payne is compiling a Trail and asked for help with some dial pictures which, of course, we now have in abundance.
Ian has since moved on to Rutland and Lincolnshire and one by-product is that he is picking up Lincolnshire sundials that Bob Adams didn’t record as he was concentrating on mass dials. To complete the Lincolnshire story a NADFAS lady is promising details from a church recording in the county shortly.
A rare record from Chris Daniel has now been tracked down thanks to Trevor Copestake’s ‘Kentish Dials’ listing from the Kent Archaeological Society.
Maureen Harmer is working her way across Sussex and haws produced dials from across the width of the County. I will issue its Register in two parts, E Sussex and W Sussex, so any recorder should note which on their reports – which will save me a little time when entering data into the Register.
Otherwise no other counties have featured, although I checked out Bishop’s Cleeve, Glos., discovered by Patrick Powers during this year’s Conference trip and previously un-noted.
The Mass Dial Register is slowly growing; Herefordshire has recently been entered and will shortly be available. It draws largely on the work of members R and C Botzum and their book with sketches of the dials they saw. A photographic survey is now necessary to back it all up.
(Aside from mass dials, Ian Butson and I are still ticking off War Memorial dials. Droitwich (following Peter Lamont) is recently recorded by Jill Wilson and we will now have to call on the Membership for help in sunny 2013)
BSS PHOTOGRAPHIC COMPETITION
After a break of a year, the Society will again be running its Photographic Competition, with the results being announced at the 2013 Annual Conference in Edinburgh.
A prize and certificate will be awarded for the winning entry, and certificates will also be awarded to the runners-up.
As in recent past competitions those delegates attending the conference were given the opportunity to consider the competition photographs, before the results of the official judges had been announced, and to take part in a “Conference Vote.” As this proved to be very popular it will again be included, with a small prize being awarded to the winner of this vote.
Now that the summer months have passed, and the shorter autumn and soon the darker days of winter will be upon us, it is still not too late to seek-out that special photograph. There is still time to catch that winning shot, or even to find that individual photograph from among your past collection.
A copy of the Entry Form, with abridged rules, as included in the September issue, will also be included in the December 2012 issue of the Bulletin. Entrants may submit up to three photographs, with the final closing date for entries being 28th February 2013.
The full set of Competition Rules may be seen by visiting the Photographic Competition section of the BSS website, or by contacting the competition organiser directly at the address given on the entry form. Or alternatively, via email at: ian@tipsdial.orangehome.co.uk
NEWBURY BSS MEETING
It was a very successful day on Saturday 22nd September 2012, with an interesting selection of talks and displays. New this year was that the Hall now has its own lawn area right out the side door of the Hall. At lunch time, everyone took a chair outdoors and much enjoyed the sunshine, both the warmth, and seeing various sundials working in the sun together with the enjoyable companionship and conversations.
Thank you to Geoff Parsons for taking the helm and steering us through the day. Thanks to all the speakers, and for all the display items folk brought along. Also others who helped make the day a great success
It was good to see so many there, including first time members and guests. See you all in 2013 ! Next year’s Newbury BSS meeting has been booked for the fourth Saturday on September, being a really special date for us dialist – 21st September 2013. Look for the flyer in the June 2013 Bulletin and on the BSS website.
A side note – Doug Bateman gave a interesting talk on Sundials to the local Newbury & District Gardening Association on 28th October 2012. Great interest by all the gardeners !
Special request from David Pawley.
David would very much like to see the following Astro Compasses. Soviet AK-53P and AK-59P Astronomical Compass and the Luftwaffe Sonnenkompass mit 24h Uhr. Kindly let David know where he could see (or even purchase ) any of these instruments.
David Pawley’s email address: info@towertime.co.uk
PHIL ROGERS
We were sorry to hear of the recent death of Phil Rogers of Rogers Turner Books. He was always a great supporter of the BSS and allowed Elsbeth Hill to use all his facilities at the office for packing up and sending out our book sales.