CHAIRMAN
This edition of the Newsletter heralds our 25th anniversary year in 2014. You will read about preparations for the Annual Conference which is to be held in Greenwich and other events that have been prepared.
Quite separately, but of the greatest significance, is the progress that Council has made on addressing the Society’s exposure to risk. There is a separate flyer which gives further details.
The Charity Commission now recognises that Charities may be exposed to risk in much the same way as commercial organisations are. Accordingly, they have devised a new structure which is recommended for Charities like ours. This is a Charitable Incorporated Organisation or CIO.
As a CIO there would be no personal liability should some extreme misfortune befall us. At present the Trustees and, very probably, other members potentially have unlimited liability.
To turn ourselves into a CIO, and to take advantage of this important protection, the Charity Commission requires us to adopt a new Constitution which has to be adapted from a model that the Charity Commission itself supplies.
Fortunately, the model can be adapted in such a way that the look and feel of the Society (the Bulletin, Conferences, Meetings and so on) will continue exactly as before.
Frank King
SECRETARY
At last April’s Edinburgh Forum, Council announced a legal review. On the basis of the independent legal advice received, members will be delighted to hear that our risk exposure will be materially reduced, and risks will be better managed and covered.
Members can also be assured and confident that our new initiatives – the new website and project Bridol (British Dials on Line) – are being implemented with professional legal oversight. Further details are provided in a separate note.
The Society, in its Silver Jubilee year, will be fit for purpose. These changes do not and will not affect members’ experience of the Society. They do no more than ensure the best practice that members have the right to expect and Trustees the duty to provide. The character, objects, and soul of our Society remain unchanged. We remain the same Society.
Chris Williams
BSS 25th ANNUAL CONFERENCE
Greenwich 24-27 April 2014
Next year’s Conference will be our 25th, so we’re pulling out all the stops to make it especially memorable. To start with, we’ll be in the heart of Greenwich, the home of timekeeping, navigation and longitude. To make the most of it we will have an extra day, so the conference will start on the Thursday after Easter and run to Sunday.
We will be staying in the very convenient, modern and comfortable Ibis Hotel – the nearest hotel to the World Heritage site of the Royal Observatory, National Maritime Museum and the former Royal Naval College designed by Sir Christopher Wren and now the University of Greenwich where the conference will be held. The five minute walk from the hotel to the conference takes you past the Cutty Sark. Venues don’t get any better than this!
The conference programme will include the usual mix of talks, exhibitions and visits to local sundials. Only in Greenwich the local sundials include one of the world’s best collections in the National Maritime Museum, one of the world’s most beautiful sundials in Chris Daniel’s dolphin dial, and a side order of a trip to the Horniman Museum with its gardens full of outstanding modern dials, mostly by BSS members. The NMM is said to have some quite good clocks, too. Oh, and an astrolabe or two.
A birthday needs a birthday cake, so attendees are invited to bring a sundial-themed cake to share. Before the sharing bit the cakes will be judged and prizes awarded.
Other attractions planned include a photographic competition, an auction, a river trip to see the city lights, a Gala Dinner in the classical splendour of the Queen Anne Council Chamber,…
As usual, the conference is on the weekend after Easter, this year running from Thursday afternoon to Sunday. If you wish to extend your stay beforehand or afterwards, this can be arranged.
Greenwich is in London so very convenient for foreign visitors to get to by air, rail or road.
With an extra day, we will have a little more time for presentations, so members are invited to speak on sundial or time-related topics, for anything from 5 to 45 minutes. This could be on 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 conference organiser know by email (conferences@sundialsoc.org.uk) or phone 01635 33270.
Chris Lusby Taylor
BULLETIN EDITOR
BSS monograph no.1
The History of the Analemma, by Chris Daniel, has been out of print for some time. A second impression is now being printed as the production of a new and extended second edition is some way away. So get your copy, plus any other monographs that you have missed, from BSS Sales in time for Christmas!
Decoration on Sundials
I am still looking for input for a special edition of the Bulletin next year.
Most Enjoyed Article 2013
Please let me re-iterate my request for votes for the article which you most enjoyed in the four issues of the Bulletin in 2013. You may vote for up to three articles, in order, by contacting me by email, phone or letter. Authors spend quite a lot of time writing articles for your enjoyment and education so they deserve to have their efforts recognised. Every vote counts and this is also your way of letting the Editor know what sort of articles to look for in the future.
John Davis
REGISTRAR
Bridol is getting closer. Bill Visick has devised a powerful and attractive format, and my army of helpers (you know who you are!) have spent many hours editing the text content for each dial. Please accept my most grateful thanks for this work.
Before we release it on an unsuspecting public, it makes sense for a range of interested members to give it a dry run. Council members will soon have the chance to comment upon it, and I would welcome any other members who would be willing to participate. I cannot promise action on all suggestions which may arise, but it will be useful to have a number of viewpoints. If you would like to help in this way, please get in touch.
John Foad
WEBSITE
Progress is accelerating on the new website and work is currently in hand to set up Bridol, giving online access to the dial information that John Foad has produced. I hope to be able to open the test system to John and a few others in the next few weeks to make sure it meets their (exacting) requirements. There will be many other changes to the new site, including more educational and archival material. The site is also designed to work not just on computers but also tablets and smartphones. I’m conscious that the development has taken a long time but it will be worth it! Any suggestions for features you would like to see are very welcome.
Bill Visick
EDUCATION
Many thanks to all of you who sent in ideas on what we can do to regarding sundial education. I will see about working on these. Thank you also to those who volunteered to do talks, though at the moment we could do with more volunteers before we publicise this: three of us would be hard pushed to cover all the UK! Hence I’ll restate the following:
‘We would like to form a list of people who are willing to talk to various groups of people, such as the U3A, local history groups, Mothers’ Union, Women’s Institute, local astronomy groups etc.. Also, I hope that some of you will be prepared to go into schools to talk to and work with young people about sundials. If you are someone who would be prepared to do get involved with a local group or school, please get in touch with me stating the area in which you would be prepared to do something and I’ll see about setting something up. Likewise, if you would like someone to come and talk to a group in your area, let me know so that I can see who is available! Spread the word – you may know someone who is looking for a speaker, in which case ask them to get in touch.’
David Brown and I have written to the Times Educational Supplement mentioning the BSS 25th anniversary next year and our willingness to write a dial related article for publication, so we wait with baited breath.
To encourage young people to do more dialling I have incorporated pictures of dials on the front cover of SYMmetryplus, a mathematical magazine for young (and not-so-young!) mathematicians. You can download a recent copy from http://www.m-a.org.uk/jsp/index.jsp?lnk=670. It also includes an article there on making an origami sundial (under one of my pseudonyms), so why not download it and, even better, join SYMS! There will be more dial related articles in due course to celebrate our 25th anniversary.
Again, I would be delighted to hear from anyone about how we can do more for education, so please do not hesitate to get in touch at education@sundialsoc.org.uk with any ideas that you have.
Peter Ransom
MEMBERSHIP
We would like to welcome to the BSS a number of new members. Mark Perry from Kent; Andrew Gilbert from London; Andrew Watson from Essex; Gianluigi Gini from Italy; Evangelia Panou from Greece and Patrick Arnold from Essex.
Jackie Jones
MASS DIALS
Two ‘new’ dials have turned up:
One at St Albans, Herts. (St Stephen’s) and one at Martlesham in Suffolk; the latter is quite surprising as Suffolk has been ‘done over’ two or three times over the years.
Two sill dials have been found in a ‘cottage’ in Halford, Warwickshire. They were on the downstairs windowsill, on the inside of the window surround. I was notified by the previous owner of the property but the current owners were happy to show it to us. The previous owner had wondered if the presence of a ‘mass’ dial indicated a covert Roman Catholic at a time when Catholics operated in secret and worshipped from home. Possibly a little fanciful, but the dials must have been put to use in some way.
A slight delay in entering the Mass Dial Register in order to re-organize about 15 years’ worth of paperwork and records but I should resume on Oxfordshire shortly. I have decided to relegate Wales and Scotland to ‘County’ status as the current County/Region duality is confusing and requires constant cross referencing – so Wales and Scotland are now in alphabetical TOWN order. This is only my personal files, the Register is unaffected and retains its current addressing. Ireland is OK as the Counties are very clearly defined both in N.I. and the Republic.
I have had an offer of help entering data into the Register from a new contact who is described as an ‘Urban Archaeologist’ and is familiar with Access and mass dials. It is not a simple tapping in data job so I will show him what we do and see if he can help – we certainly need it.
NADFAS are providing a dial every other month or so and recently came up with a sundial that we didn’t have a photo of so John Foad was quite delighted.
Bob Adams’ Lincolnshire is being produced with pages printed on both sides and a copy is to go into the Society Library with other County Registers in due course.
Happy Christmas.
Tony Wood
HERALDING 2014…
Amongst other things…
There will be a BSS 2014 pdf wall calendar posted on the web site for downloading before Christmas.
There will be a sundial cake competition at the Greenwich Conference, so there’s still plenty of time to get practising. There will be no restrictions on what type of cake or cakes can be entered. Let your and/or your partner’s sciatological imaginations and baking skills run wild. Judging will be by popular vote on Friday 25th April followed by consumption by all who dare. Prizes will be awarded during the weekend.
There will be various 2014-related initiatives detailed with the next edition of the Newsletter, including model press releases for you to personalise/localise and distribute to your local papers, radio and TV stations. Start thinking about which of your local dials would be good examples to point the media to and thereby draw attention to the BSS and its 25th anniversary, in the hope that membership numbers can be augmented.
David Brown
BSS PHOTOGRAPHIC COMPETITION 2013-14
Members will be aware that the Photographic Competition is normally only run every two years, with the most recent being at the 2013 Edinburgh Conference this year.
However, following the 2012-13 Photo Competition several members have suggested that as 2014 will be the 25th Anniversary of the Society we might consider running a special photographic competition and this has been readily agreed.
It is intended that the format of this anniversary competition will be a little less formal and more relaxed than the usual event, with just a simple vote by those members attending the conference to determine the result, and not being formally marked by a panel of judges. In the past, this Conference voting technique has proved to be very successful in producing a final result popular with the membership.
For this competition it is intended that an updated and suitably modified version of the previous Photographic Competition Rules and Entry Form will apply. A full set of the updated Competition Rules and Entry Form will also be available by visiting the BSS website. A copy of the Entry Form (including abridged Competition Rules) is also included with this issue of The Bulletin.
As usual, entrants may submit up to three photographs. Each photo must not be larger than 10½ x 7 inches, have a title below, and be mounted on a thin sheet of card, no larger in size than A4.
Normally, photographs that have been previously exhibited in the earlier competitions would not be accepted into those of subsequent years, as described in Rule 15. However, on this occasion of the 25th Anniversary of the Society, photographs from any of the previous competitions may also be re-entered into this one.
Entries should be submitted to the competition organiser, by 17th April 2014, for documentation and preparation for display, prior to the conference on the 24th – 27th April 2014.
Any last minute entries, however, will be accepted at the conference itself, (although not too many, please!)
Prizes and certificates will be awarded for the first three places in the competition. Time now to go looking for that winning photo. I look forward to receiving your entries.
NB Please note new submission date for entries, following changes to conference dates, as shown originally in the September Newsletter.
Ian Butson