“And the time sundials tell, May be minutes and hours. But it may just as well Be seconds and sparkles, or seasons and flowers.” John Ciardi, The Monster Den Left: the face of a sundial in the garden at Canons The Droskyn sundial, made to celebrate the Ashby, Northamptonshire. Below: Harriet James millennium, has views across Perran Bay in the Cornish seaside resort of Perranport who were late 18th century instrument makers. It is very much in the traditional style with a compass in the middle,” she says. “It is made of brass but gets its green colour from salts emerging from the copper content of the brass. This verdigris look is imitated on modern dials because it makes them look weathered.” Harriet has been a sundial maker for 20 years and in that time the weather has played an important role in her work. She will only visit potential clients on sunny days and only installs dials when the sun’s rays can show them off to best effect. Working from home in the outskirts of Warminster in Wiltshire, she crafts sundials for garden pedestals, the walls of houses and Oxford colleges, for churches and even for playgrounds. She is one of more than 400 members of the British Sundial Society, an organisation celebrating a craft that literally dates back to the beginning of time. time only at one geographical location. If ARRIET JAMES LAYS One of the dials in Harriet’s workshop the dial is based anywhere else, then a a plastic protractor against a bears a quote from Philip Larkin’s poem, correction must be added. small block of stone on the busy An Arundel Tomb: “What will survive of To tell the time accurately, the edge of worktop inside her garage. She us is love”. The dial is horizontal – the gnomon must point to the North Pole. Hcarefully marks a circle in pencil before meaning it sits flat to a horizontal surface As the sun moves, a shadow, or a spot of The sun’s choosing one of the 50 hexagonal chisels – and has a gnomon protruding at an light, is cast on hour lines calculated by a lying on a shelf behind her. Tapping gently angle equal to the dial’s latitude. A formula and etched or carved on the face and skilfully, Harriet chips at the outline gnomon is the part of a sundial that casts of the dial. Lines can indicate dates too, which will shape a new sundial. the shadow, thus showing the time. and there is one on Harriet’s Larkin This will be one of more than 200 she inscribed dial that marks 23 April, the timekeeper has made. Alongside, are examples of work Time zone challenges wedding anniversary of her clients. “You in progress – one dial featuring a butterfly, Most dials tell local rather than clock can work out the date from the height of another a tortoise, while a third is a more time. The two differ because clock time is the gnomon and the shadow it casts,” hefty cube dial with faces to the north, usually kept uniform across time zones. Harriet explains. For milennia the sun has been used to tell the south, east and west. A fourth rather Each time zone differs from its neighbour “Vertical dials are also common but time and one Wiltshire woman is using these bruised dial Harriet found in a scrap yard. by one full hour, more in China and a different formula is used to work out the She suspects it to be around 180 years old. Alaska. However, within each zone, the hour line angles. The shadow moves A sundial in Harriet’s workshop, which is inscribed ancient techniques to make modern sundials “It was made by the Elliott Brothers local time on a sundial matches the clock anti-clockwise on vertical dials but › with a quote from a Philip Larkin poem 7680 81 Left: the new sundial for All Saints Far right: Harriet’s Church in Stamford, butterfly sundial Lincolnshire Right: the ancient scratch sundial at St Michael’s Church in Sutton, Norfolk. Below: sundial at Roadford Lake 1790s to deter undesirables from check her calculations. But at the same Country Park congregating around it. A trust set up time, she is fascinated by the way in which during the 1980s commissioned Harriet’s some makers used dials to show how clever friend, letter cutter Caroline Webb, to they were at maths. clockwise on horizontal and equatorial make a complete stone replica of the A large, prominent sundial at All dials – those whose faces are parallel with Above: the Seven Dials in Covent Garden, monument. Harriet was inspired and Saints Church in Stamford, Lincolnshire, the equator.” London. Below: Harriet’s large sundial on Caroline taught her how to use chisels to is currently taking much of Harriet’s the New College tower at Oxford Reclining or inclining dials might be make her own sundials. attention. It will be removed for found on a sloping roof, lying neither in “I am not a scientist but I like the restoration and display, and be replaced by line with the equator nor vertical or mixture of art and science involved in a new dial. Harriet is technical consultant horizontal. Some of the most beautiful making a dial. It’s a proper functioning for the project. “Originally they were just dials have hour lines marked on a stained thing but can incorporate art, symbols going to preserve it but it was too high to glass window with the gnomons outside and mythology.” read and if it had just been repainted it the window. Others are laid out on a The history of a dial is important to wouldn’t have had a function.” ceiling where a beam of light is reflected Harriet and her restoration work at Oxford Harriet often tries to persuade church from a windowsill mirror. Playground colleges, where “there were hundreds of authorities to preserve and replace their dials are equally intoxicating, according to dials”, is providing the material for a book sundials. “Very often I lose because it gets Harriet. “When you walk down the describing a sundial walk in the city. too complicated. There are a lot of dials central path of this kind of dial, your On the New College tower, Harriet that need rescuing. The dial was shadow tells the time,” she explains. carved a large dial with foot high numerals something of beauty not just an Scratch, or mass, dials inside church MM (to mark the millennium) inverted instrument. It was scientific and allegorical porches may be no more than a little circle below the dial to signify WW for William but still about time passing. It was very of scratch lines. The lines can seem of Wyckham, the college founder. important to put the two together.” accidental or random and be mistaken for “Oxford was a hub for dialling, a mason’s marks. “They are not accurate because of the colleges and their scientific • Words: Cath Harris because when they were made we didn’t knowledge,” explains Harriet, who admits have the knowledge of how the earth to being “constantly frustrated” by her tilted. But it didn’t matter if the time was lack of scientific training. To redress the CONTACTS wrong because everyone shared it. It was balance, she uses computer programmes to www.sunnydials.co.uk Harriet with the just the time to go to church.” brass sundial she Dials in playgrounds, on ceilings and recovered from walls already have a base but others need a scrap yard their own plinth. For these, Harriet uses Doulting stone from Somerset, formed in the Jurassic age, or stone from the Isle of Sundials through the centuries The Bewcastle Portland, Bath or Purbeck. She also uses Cross in Cumbria slate, notably Cumbrian green slate, The Maya people of Central were used extensively in China Pocket dials were made for “which looks very good on walls”. America were among the first to and ancient Greece. The Romans carrying on one’s person and The gnomons are metal because they use the position of the sun to tell mounted them on pillars. incorporated a device for the time, based on their The oldest known adjusting to changes in location. must be sturdy. Currently, stainless steel knowledge of astronomy. About Anglo-Saxon dials are visible on Today, huge sundials decorate is in vogue. 5000 years later, the ancient the Bewcastle Cross in Cumbria buildings, including Taipei 101, a Egyptians did the same, creating and the south wall of Escombe 101-story skyscraper in Taiwan. Finding inspiration a 365-day calendar. Church in County Durham. They Mottoes referring to time often It was Seven Dials pillar in London’s Alamy; Getty Images; National Trust Images By 1400BC the Egyptians were made in the 700s. It was in adorn sundials, some taken from Covent Garden that first attracted Harriet were using L-shaped sundials, the 1500s that sundials became Shakespeare’s sonnets; others to dial making. The original pillar, erected turned to the east in the morning fashionable in Europe and the being Latin inscriptions such as in 1694, was pulled down during the Photography: and west after midday. Sundials range of designs mushroomed. carpe diem (seize the day). 82 83.