Sundials

[plaques]

Even in this age of digital /analogue watches most people have an inner affection with sundials. Having said that, in this rain soaked area of Barlick there is probably only two days a year when one of these instruments would be of service. Which brings me to the point that possibly one of the most unusual designs of sundials stands over the entrance porch of St Bartholomew's Church Colne. The casual observer would think that the dial having somehow got twisted round from its original position. Lying at some 16 degrees to the entrance. There is of course a good scientific reason for this alignment. The church is set not at true East to West as one would expect but pointing at the sun rise on August 24, St Bartholomew's day. Consequently, the sundial being of a North -South design would have to point at the polar star. Hence, the 16 degree discrepancy.

The sundial's design is also unusual in that is a "cube" with three gnomon (pointers) giving the daylight time. The date of manufacture is said to be 1669 well before the invention of a reliable clock. So the next time you pass St Bartholomew's
Just pause for a while and take pride in the fact that we have probably got one of the rarest sundials of its kind in the country.

To quote the old adage. Time and tide wait for no man (gnomon).

[PanBiker]

An interesting first post Plaques, welcome to the site.

[Stanley]

Welcome to the site.

[Cathy]

Welcome to the site Plaque. Could we have a picture of ther sundial?

[Wendyf]

Welcome to the site Plaques.
Hope you don't mind me posting this in your topic.

[plaques]

Thank you all for your comments with a special thanks to Wendyf for the photograph. It was a reference to this image on a Google search that made me choose this subject as my first posting. I must make it clear that I have a general interest in everything but expert at nothing. Far from being certain on subjects it is those niggling doubts that make life interesting. As a long retired engineer my current main projects are the restoration of British motorcycles, and Burnley local history.

Just one more comment associated with sundials, Did Colne ever have a "first" public clock and if so what is the story behind it?

[PanBiker]

I am going to move this thread to another forum category as this practice thread is automatically wiped of content after 7 days. I will move it to Local History Topics and leave a shadow topic in Practice Posting which should be auto wiped next week.

[Wendyf]

Not sure if it was the first one, but there was the Ivegate Clock built by Nicholas England in 1841 and demolished in 1875...I think it was because the structure was dangerous.

[plaques]

Ivegate sounds plausible. There is a date stone above Ivegate of 1841. Erecting a public clock may have been a gesture of philanthropy on the other hand it may have been to ensure his workers got there in time.
Perhaps I'm being a bit too harsh.

[Stanley]

Not at all. The main reason for the public clock was to give the poor people a time check. After the Reformation of the 16th century the customary tolling of bells to signal the various services during the day was banned and the poor lost there time check. Eventually churches installed clocks to ensure punctuality for church services and some of the earliest time pieces were on church towers. It wasn't until the advent of the electric telegraph that accurate public time became possible, prior to that every area had local time. Accurate time was essential for the railways and they were the first to have public clocks at the stations set to Railway Telegraph Time. The Post Office followed shortly afterwards, every Post Office had a public clock. However, there was a problem, the railway time was slightly in front of post office time. The mill clocks were set by railway time as that was the clock the Manchester Man saw and set his watch by each day, the workers using PO time. The consequence was that the mill engines were starting early and all the workers were late. I have references in the Calf Hall Shed Company minute books to this and the engine men had to use PO time.

[plaques]

As a follow up to the posting by Wendyf, ref: the Ivegate clock. The image shows the rather massive clock as taken in 1871 . The clock is placed on the adjacent buildings not directly over the tunnel entrance as one would imagine.
Thanks for bringing the clock to my attention.

[Stanley]

One interesting clock-related matter which surfaced in the LTP. Horace Thornton was verger at Carleton church and he once opened up so Johnny Pickles could look at the clock which is reputed to have been made by a local farmer. Johnny noted the freewheel on the wind vane that regulated the chiming mechanism and said it was the earliest he knew of. Another curiosity, the clock on Kelbrook church has four faces, Quite rare in a church clock.

[plaques]

I am not sure why it is unusual for church clocks to have four faces but it may be related to burial customs. It the very early churches it was custom for those with wealth and status to be buried within the church itself. A sort of first class ticket to the hereafter. The rest of the populace got as near as they could to the outer walls with certain positions giving them an edge over the rest. For those unfortunates who died without baptism or classed as lunatics or downright villains they were often buried on the north side without any recognition. So to come to my point. It was as though the “Church” could not give them the time of day.

Note!. No disrespect is meant to those many people who get comfort and satisfaction from their beliefs.

[Stanley]

Or, one face was the cheaper option! Usually facing the village.

[Whyperion]

There's an interesting sundial on the ground outside Colne Library too.

When I lived in a village in Oxfordshire some time ago the Minute Hand fell off the Parish Church Clock , for some time the hand spent its time in the Kitchen of the Farmhouse I was staying in opposite the church, indeed it was still there when I moved out. I think the small village managed with the hour hand only quite well. For me getting up was measured by the chap ( I presume ) roaring his motorbike down the road outside the bedroom window , so much for quiet village life , as 10 mins later assorted aircraft from the USAF base at Upper Heyford made their first morning flights overhead. If I overslept and missed this , the rumble of the local morning bus meant I had 5mins to run round the corner for the through bus down to the city , If I missed that no bus for 2hrs.

[Whyperion]

... I must make it clear that I have a general interest in everything but expert at nothing. Far from being certain on subjects it is those niggling doubts that make life interesting.

Welcome and join the club.

[plaques]

P6130037BC.jpg

Risking being a complete bore and returning to St Bartholomew’s Church, here are a couple of pictures that may be interesting.

The first is of St Bartholomew’s in 1866. It shows the church with the old sundial and a single east facing clock. References to the clock record that in 1811 the old single faced clock was replaced by a three faced clock. Perhaps someone could clarify what actually took place. I wasn’t around then
The building, extreme left, is Northgate. Replaced by the Co-operative Society Hall in 1888, (now Shackleton Hall),.

The second image shows the sundial in more detail. The side plates give a more detailed time for mornings and evenings.
It also shows that the clock has now been removed. The only witness being some lighter coloured stones.

[plaques]

One of the exhibits in the Manchester Museum of science and Industry (MOSI) is a very early railway sundial. Made in 1833 this dial was placed above the entrance of the Liverpool road passenger entrance which at that time was the very first passenger terminus in the world. Although backed up by clocks the sundial was the reference time piece keeping them in tune with the “local” time. Using a sundial for reference was not unusual in the 1830’s since clocks of that period were often inaccurate and unreliable. The main problem though was that sundials were only accurate with respect to each other on the same longitude. Hence the term “local” time. Rail travel and the need for more accurate time schedules led Manchester Corporation to adopt the Greenwich Mean Time in 1849. This, and more accurate clocks, made the sundial a thing of the past.

P9180088AD.jpg

Manchester Liverpool Rd Station Sundial.

Although placed over the entrance its design is that of a horizontal dial requiring a supporting plinth. By using this design it is possible to capture the suns rays from early morning to late evening. The more convenient vertical dial would be restricted to a maximum of 12 hours sunlight even if the building structure did not block some of the available daylight.
The image below shows the top window setting of the sundial.

[plaques]

Human Sundials.
For those with a general interest in sundials the relatively new “Human” or Analemmatic sundial outside the Colne library is possibly as simple as it gets. By standing on the appropriate date plinth and casting a shadow you can get a reasonably correct time. (within 15 minutes) To adjust for British summer time you have to use the inner of the two timer rings.

Sundial 1.jpg

Of course you would have difficulty if the sun wasn't shining as in this case when it was raining. Fortunately, there's a clock inside the library.

P1160028AC.jpg

P1160031AC.jpg

These types of dials are often used in public places where the maintenance is minimal. Although the physical presentation is simple, the maths behind their designs is a great deal more complex. For those interested in number crunching an explanation is given in.
http://plus.maths.org/content/os/issue1 ... ials/index

[plaques]

Vertical Sundials

Vertical sundials attached to a wall or purpose built building have the advantage in that they are clearly visible. The biggest disadvantage is that the wall is seldom facing due south and the dial will generally require some adjustment to its design. The most obvious adjustment is that if a standard gnomon pointer is used in its traditional central position the noon day shadow would no longer fall on the ‘six-o-clock’ position but be skewed to one side. To get round this problem the pointer is rotated about its axis to give the correct shadow. Although this solves one problem the resultant hourly shadows are no longer symmetrical on each side of the dial but vary from side to side. St Peter’s Church Burnley for example is built 30 degrees off true south facing and results in a noticeable adjustment to the pointer and dial.

P6290142AD.jpg

A similar extreme example is the dial at Foreside, Barrowford where the building is almost 52 degrees off a true south facing wall. The pointer here can be seen to be rotated even farther to the left with much ‘tighter’ hour markings for the morning and only two hours showing for the afternoon.

PB070022AD.jpg

Neither of these matches the problem face by the Inghamite Church on Wheatley Lane Rd where the church is set at almost 35 degrees due north. Built in 1897 the East-West convention has been totally ignored. The rather ingenious solution was to place the dial on the corner of the building so that it faces due south. This now gives a traditional design with perfect symmetry.

PB130031AC.jpg

PB130032AC.jpg

[Stanley]

Good job they don't control the 'pips'! They'd be closer together at some parts of the day...

[plaques]

Stanley, I've been told from a reliable source that the Greenwich sundial is spot on south facing. Not only that, it is located at 0 degrees longitude so no further correction needs to be made. So you can always rely on the 'Pips' from here.

[PanBiker]

Just to be pedantic, I think it should be noted that the sundial at Greenwich although apparently perfectly aligned has nothing to do with the generation of the time signal "pips".

They are actually generated from a number of different sources and methods depending on global geographic area but the ones you hear on the BBC come from an atomic clock which is installed in the basement of Broadcasting House which itself is synchronised with the National Standards Laboratories atomic time source.

An interesting Wiki below.

Greenwich Time Signal

[plaques]

Actually all this 'sundial' business has nothing at all in establishing our true reference point of time. Their main use, as far as I can see, is getting the peasants to work on time and collecting them up on their day off to tell them how to behave. It was only when they started losing commercial shipping, ie: big style money, that they commissioned the search for longitude. The final reference point was defined by the Airy transit circle 1851. Even this has been superseded using the transit of satellites. Which just goes to show you can't rely on anything staying constant. We'll just have to wait and see what happens now that Barlick has had their big switch on.
Something else to read, Prime Meridian.

[plaques]

A relatively recent addition to the local collection of sundials can be found at Towneley Hall, Burnley. Commissioned for the Millennium celebrations and installed in 2001 it was designed by Professor Alan Smith of Salford University. Although the Hall itself is aligned at 45 degrees north to south the face on the south west buttress is facing due south. Readers will now be familiar with the fact that sundials in this position enjoy a balanced dial equally spaced for morning and afternoon divisions. The face of the dial is inscribed “ 1629 – 1707, Richard Towneley “. The top centre shows the coat of arms of the Towneley’s and the right hand corner carries the date of the millennium in Roman numerals ‘M M’. This date is not immediately obvious since they are place vertically rather than horizontally. Probably adopted for aesthetic reasons.

P6120166AC.jpg

The left hand corner is more interesting but even more esoteric. Richard Towneley had more than a passing interest in several scientific disciplines. These included both astronomy and horology. The date, 1676, was the year when the Royal Observatory at Greenwich was completed with John Flamsteed, a friend of Towneley, as the first astronomer royal.

P6120166AD.jpg

In horology, Richard Towneley is credited with the invention the ‘deadbeat’ escapement which had been built into the clocks at Greenwich. The lack of recoil on the second finger allows a more accurate timing of the Earth’s daily revolution to be made. A replica of the ‘Thomas Moore clock’ can be seen inside Towneley Hall.

P1010048AC.jpg

The attached picture of the inside of the clock may help to explain the sundial graphics.

P1010052AC.jpg