CHAIRMAN
My second year on Council is drawing to a close and I look forward to outlining progress at the Edinburgh Conference.
As at Cheltenham last year, a session will be set aside for discussion. One topic to be aired is the Society’s Grants Policy. Council is reluctant to spend members’ money without having some feel for the views of the membership.
There is a Council paper circulated with the March Bulletin and comments are welcome. If you are not attending the Conference please send your comments directly to the Secretary.
This year we return to Scotland. We have a new Conference Organiser in Chris Lusby Taylor who has assembled a very enticing programme for us. We shall certainly be seeing a large number of sundials. It is still not too late to register for the Conference and I very much look forward to meeting many of you there.
SECRETARY
The 2012-13 Council held its last meeting on 12 Feb. As in earlier meetings our efforts concentrated on the website – both the new site and new content – and grants policy. These will be covered in detail in our year end reports (to the AGM) and considered at the Edinburgh Forum (as outlined in the Chairman’s message).
Dials on the web: The Registrar circulated plans for putting a selection of British sundials on our website with the Sept 2012 Bulletin. Comment received has been overwhelmingly positive and supportive. A prototype demonstrated at Newbury was also favourably received. The Registrar specifically requested any member who did not wish their dial photographs to be used on line to say so. Council is pleased to report that only one member has objected – enquiries to identify the relevant images continue.
Bulletins on the web: It is also planned to put earlier/non-recent editions of the Bulletin on line. Again, it is only right to do so with the consent of members. Should any author not wish their Bulletin article(s) to be used on line please inform me.
AGM and annual Accounts: The 2012 AGM witnessed concerns regarding the availability of the accounts. This was in large part prompted by an unholy combination of circumstances causing an unacceptable outcome – failure to both circulate the 2011 Accounts to AGM attendees and satisfactorily post them for inspection at the conference. Council has reviewed the situation and can confirm that copies of the full 2012 Accounts will be available for inspection at the Edinburgh conference and all attendees will receive a short form version in their conference packs. In addition, the full 2012 Accounts will be posted on the website (www.sundialsoc.org.uk/accounts) before the Edinburgh conference as soon as they are received from the external examiner. Should anyone attending the AGM unable to access our website wish to peruse the Accounts before the conference please contact me.
List of dial makers: As part of the general updating of our website the list is being reviewed and updated. Some entries have a rather dated feel and broken links. Could all those who wish to remain on the list please confirm and update their entry to me.
Notification of the 2013 Annual General Meeting.
The AGM will be held at the end of the forthcoming Edinburgh conference at about 12.30 on Sunday 7th April 2013. All members are entitled to attend. If you are not a conference delegate it is in the John McIntyre Conference Centre on the Edinburgh University campus (Pollock Halls, 18 Holyrood Park Road, Edinburgh). If you are not attending the conference and wish to attend the AGM please notify Chris Lusby Taylor (contact details on inside back cover of the Bulletin).
Call for 2013-14 Council Nominations.
Our Constitution decrees that Council serves for one year, terminating at the AGM. The Constitution requires the following be elected at the AGM :
- Honorary Officer of Chairman;
- Honorary Officer of Secretary;
- Honorary Officer of Treasurer; and
- at least one and not more than four other Council Members.
Nominations for the above must be made by members of the Society in writing and be received by the Secretary (Peirce House, Charing, Kent, TN27 0HU or secretary@sundialsoc.org.uk) at least fourteen days before the AGM i.e. by 24 March 2013.
BULLETIN EDITOR
The change to our new printers, The Lavenham Press Ltd., went well. There were some postal delays with a few copies of the December issue – the Christmas rush starts very early nowadays. I hope everyone got their copy in the end: let me know if not.
My apologies if you watched the TV programme marking the retirement of Rowan Williams as Archbishop of Canterbury hoping to see the Canterbury Saxon pendant. It seems that the sequence ended up on the cutting-room floor and we watched an hour of the Archbishop’s witterings in vain!
Since I wrote the Postscript to John Wall’s article on Dickensian Dials in this issue, I have found some additional information about Dickens’s own sundial. It seems that Francis Barker & Son of Clerkenwell offered replicas of the dial (including the ‘Rochester Bridge’ pedestal) for sale after purchasing the original. It is quite possible, even probable, that they made the original dial for Dickens. But where is that original dial now or, indeed, any of the replicas? I am currently in touch with several Dickens experts and mailing lists and hope something may turn up.
BSS CONFERENCE : EDINBURGH : APRIL 5 TO 7
The Conference is looking very exciting, with a full programme of fascinating-sounding talks and the prospect of a very memorable walking tour, including a guided visit to the National Museum of Scotland and a private view of the amazing dials in Heriot’s School. 15 attendees will be exhibiting dials ancient and modern and related material, including Elspeth Hill with her bookstall.
The Somerville Lecturer will be Tony Freeth, who you will probably have seen on BBC 4’s The 2000 Year Old Computer. He led the internal examination of this, the Antikythera Mechanism, and will talk on the astounding secrets revealed by scanning and the reconstruction of its 50+ gears, 2,000 inscription characters and many dials. The story isn’t finished, and Tony invites members to discuss and contribute to the ongoing theories. (BTW, the programme is currently available on BBC iPlayer)
I must apologise for a misleading statement on the conference booking form. While we do ask total non-members to join the Society, this was not intended to apply to partners, helpers, spouses and indeed anyone else accompanying a member. If this put you off coming, please be put off no longer.
It is not too late to book, but please email your requirements as well as posting the booking form, so we can make sure we have enough rooms. We have asked for several extra rooms to be held open for us for another couple of weeks.
The booking form is on the Web site (www.sundialsoc.org.uk) on the Conferences page.
TREASURER
Our financial year 2012 is complete and the books are currently being scrutinised. A draft set of accounts will be produced shortly, which will be put onto the Society website at the earliest opportunity. The finalised accounts will follow likewise.Due to a very small change in the required wording, every single Gift Aid declaration members have made in the past is now invalid. With this Bulletin is a replacement Gift Aid form that I urge everybody able and willing to complete and return. If lacking excitement or interest, Gift Aid is extremely important to the Society: each year we receive an amount approximating the cost of one issue of the Bulletin. Please send your forms as soon as you conveniently can. Thank you.
MEMBERSHIP
There are a few questions that I am often asked, so I thought it may be an idea to clarify some of them here. Members occasionally worry whether their membership is overdue and that they will be deleted. Fear not, you should receive a reminder about 2 weeks before your renewal date and this will have details of the amount owing and by when. If I do not hear from you, I will then send a reminder before deleting you. It is also quite possible to pay for more than one year at a time if this is more convenient; the only proviso is that if there is a subscription increase, it will still apply and be added to a later notice. Subscription rates are designed to cover expenses, a large one is postage. There are no increases planned for a number of years yet. Do contact me with any other queries.
I would like to welcome new members to the Society. Martins Gills is from Riga in Latvia; Deborah Hoskins is from the Isle of Wight; Ian Goldsmith is from Oxfordshire and George Brooks is from Florida. I am afraid that four members have recently died; Alex Bishop, Phil Rogers, W. Alton and Richard Chambers.
REGISTER NOTES
Preparation continues for the first phase of Bridol (British Dials On Line). Only two counties still lack a ‘helper’ for re-writing descriptions, and otherwise tidying up the Register entries (Wilts and Cumbria – any takers?) All the rest are ‘spoken for’, and indeed three quarters have now been returned. I am really grateful for your help in this work.
On a separate tack, have you come across “WayMarking” (http://www.waymarking.com)?
If you enter ‘sundials’ and then click ‘sundial hunters’, you will find their “description/mission statement”:To find and waymark all the sundials in the known universe.
[Ed : Hope they’ve got the one on the Mars Curiosity]
OK, I clicked on Yorkshire, and they only have 13 so far, but FIVE of them are good vertical dials not in the Register! Four are dated 1634, 1713, 1954 and 2000. The fifth is a beautiful, recently carved, slate dial at Addingham, with the motto “That we have no need to consider”, but no numerals or hour lines at all. Apparently it is known locally as an ‘ish’ dial – for example, by the shadow, “it’s 12:30 ish”. The motto comes from a translation of the work of the Venerable Bede : “we cannot be so wise that we have no need to consider what will be decided for our souls”.
Plenty of scope there to find good unrecorded dials all across the country, I think. And Spring WILL come!
John Foad
01622 858583
MASS DIAL MEANDERINGS
Quite a brisk start to 2013 with TWO ‘new’ mass dials – in the first week of January. One at Portchester in Hampshire and one at Marton in North Yorkshire. Both in quite good condition and both with a story behind them. Maybe an appearance in the Bulletin at some stage. Thanks to Maureen Harmer and John Davis/Alan Cook for these two.
Also a NADFAS report from Suffolk with excellent photo.
The Mass Dial Register entries for Hampshire are almost complete, all largely due to Peter Ransom and his efforts ten years ago and more. Anybody with a particular interest in Hampshire please contact me. I have in mind to cover Oxfordshire next, which is a very large county in mass dial terms and will take quite a while. I am hoping that Ian Butson can start making parallel entries for other counties shortly.
From Pedro Novella in Spain: 106 pages of attachment – in Spanish!. Anyway, all downloaded and it is being ‘gone through’. The article concerns ‘dials with numbers round the edge’, a peculiar subset of our dials, usually reckoned to be later ones; possibly just prior to the change to ‘scientific’ dials. Pedro may be able to shed light on the history of mass dials and their expansion and distribution.
At a personal level, I have at long last acquired a digital camera! First pictures on the first of January for the War Memorials study that Ian and I are plodding along with. So far no mass dials digitally, it will be interesting to see how I get on.
NORTH AMERICAN SUNDIAL SOCIETY
This year’s NASS conference will take place in Boston Massachusetts August 22-25. In addition to the usual array of talks, doorprizes, and good fellowship, the conference will feature an extended visit to the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments at Harvard University – including the largest collection (500+) of sundials in North America. For more information, contact Fred Sawyer.
STAINED GLASS SUNDIAL MATERIAL
I have recently passed my stained-glass sundial material – books, papers, images and the like – to Geoffrey Lane, who has a proven interest and expertise in this field. I should like to follow this by giving my multiple sundial material – much less in quantity and quality – to anyone who may be seriously interested in this aspect of dialling and who might be prepared, at some future date, to write the proposed BSS monograph on this subject. Please contact me by e-mail if this responsibility appeals to you.
BSS BULLETIN INDEX
Members are reminded that an index is available for articles published in the Bulletin for the period from 2002 up to the present time. Available in MS Word document format, the index provides a Title Index and also an Author Index for the Bulletin articles. The cumulative indexes are updated soon after publication of the latest issue of the Bulletin.
If you would like a copy, or wish to be included on a list to automatically receive the updated issues, please contact me
ROGERS TURNER BOOKS AT THE EDINBURGH CONFERENCE
You may be aware that the London office of Rogers Turner Books will be closed by the end of 2013 following the death of Phil Rogers in October last year. However, the family have given me permission to bring all the dialling stock up to the conference and to offer his books to delegates at much reduced prices.
I am currently preparing a catalogue of all stock; dialling, horology, scientific instruments, history & philosophy of science, together with some reference books – also with a 40% discount.
MISSING SUNDIAL
Wollaton Hall is a late 16th Century house on the outskirts of Nottingham. It was recently used as a key location for the latest Batman film ‘The Dark Knight Rises’. When I visited it for the first time in 1997 there was a brass(?) sundial on a pillar on the South Terrace. I regret that I didn’t take photos at the time. It had a rather odd-shaped gnomon. When I visited again earlier this year, the pillar was still there, but sadly without the dial. Enquiries are ongoing as to when it went missing – about eight years ago it is thought. The dial is not recorded in the Register. If any member has any photos of it or information about it, I would be very pleased to hear from them. I am hoping to write a longer article for the Bulletin about at least one other sundial linked to Wollaton Hall and it would be good to be able to bring the story up to date.