# The Strand Magazine/Volume 3/Issue 18/Sun-Dials

Illustrated by W. H. J. Boot.
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​ FACT that sun-dials will soon be a thing completely of the past, and the interest which attaches to their usually beautiful forms and their quaint mottoes, makes one wish to put on record at least a few of those that may still be found in out-of-the-way places—sometimes perched aloft on crumbling porches, sometimes hidden away in old-world gardens.
Through the courtesy of General the Hon. Sir J. Co Cowell, K.C.B., and with the kindly help of Mr. Nutt, the well-known architect of Windsor, I have been enabled to give to the readers of The Strand Magazine a presentment of a Royal sun-dial, which stands on the cast terrace in Her Majesty's private gardens at Windsor Castle. It was erected by Charles II., was designed and carved by the famous Grinling Gibbons, and its gnomon—which is an especially beautiful one—bears the King's monogram and crown. The dial-plate is graven with the Star of the Garter, with its motto, "Honi soit qui mal y pense," and with the maker's name, "Henricus Wynne, Londinii, fecit."
At Tunbridge Wells, on the Church of King Charles the Martyr, painted on a board, and in excellent preservation, within shadow of "Ye Pantiles," where walked and talked good old Dr. Johnson, Beau Nash, Cumberland the dramatist, and their following, will be found a dial bearing the motto "You may waste, but cannot stop me"; below it is the maker's name, Alex. Rae, but it is not dated. At Ferox Hall, Tonbridge, beneath the shadow of a magnificent cedar of Lebanon, more than four hundred years old, and almost ​ smothered with ivy (which rendered it a somewhat difficult matter to make a sketch at all), is a very old dial placed upon two stones; it is excellent in design, and the great tree's shelter has preserved it almost intact from the ravages of time."Remove not the ancient landmark which thy fathers have set" is carved in Gothic lettering around the stone shaft of a sun-dial in the churchyard of St. Mary and St. Eanswythe, Folkestone. The shaft surmounts four very ancient steps, which originally belonged to the Town Cross, beneath which in ages past, according to the old charter of the Corporation, the Mayor was annually elected. The old horn which was blown on these occasions to summon the people together still exists, and is to be found hung above the Mayoral Chair in the Town Hall; it was one of the treasures lent to the Royal Naval Exhibition just closed.
Fifteen miles over the hills brings us to Canterbury, which possesses several dials, chief amongst which, perhaps, is the one in the public garden called "The Dane John." It stands some seven or eight feet high, and round its shaft are four figures typical of the seasons.
The dial (a drawing of which is given) in the stained glass window in the private office of E. S. Johnson, Esq., at Derby, is a modern but very fine one; it is an exact copy, painted 1888, by Frederick Drake, of the Close, Exeter, the glazier to the Cathedral, who painted it from one taken out of an old manor house in Devonshire, dated 1660. The motto is "Dum spectas fugio" (While thou lookest I fly). Below is ​depicted a bird and a fly (which is marvellously realistic in treatment); the motto is supposed to infer a punning suggestion that they (the hours) fly. There is one very similar in the High-street at Marlborough. The one in Winchester College, to which reference has previously been made, is very like it in design. The same inscription with date 1739 is to be seen on the dial which surmounts a pillar in a garden at Rotherham; it is also to be seen on an old entrance to one of the canons' houses at Exeter, again at King's Lynn, at Ripley, and on Ingleton Church, Yorkshire.
In the picturesque old town of Rye, on a vertical dial (now upon the Town Hall), which was taken from the old Grammar School, when the windows were altered in the Jubilee year, are the mottoes—
"The solar shadow as it measures life,
It life resembles too."
and—
"Tempus edax rerum" (Time, the devourer of all things).
Bishop Edmund Redyngton wrote the following quaint distiches, A.D. 1665, for a dial at Addington, Kent:—
Amyddst y$^e$ fflowres I tell y$^e$ houres.
Tyme wanes awaye As fflowres decaye.
Beyond y$^e$ tombe Ffreshe fflowrets bloome.
Soe man shall ryse Above ye skyes.
In the churchyard of the fine old Perpendicular church at Headcorn, Kent, built in the time of Edward IV., which still possesses some of its original stained glass, will be found the wreck of a dial (for it is little else), a sketch of which is given. The twisted wrought iron addition to the gnomon, which is nailed at its other end to the oak shaft, is apparently the work of a by no means over-skilful village Vulcan. The date on the dial is 1763, and it stands by a great oak said to be at least one thousand years old.
Winchester, too, is rich in dials; on the south wall of John Frommond's Chantry Chapel, Winchester College, on one of the buttresses, painted in black, and which weather will soon have completely effaced, is a quaint dial bearing date 1712.
In a window in the old election-chamber, now one of the masters' rooms, is a glass dial, oval in form, beautiful in colour, and bearing on a painted scroll the motto—"Ut umbra sic vita transit" (As a shadow so doth life pass).
On the south wall of the church of St. Maurice, with its grand old Norman door-way, is an ancient stone vertical sun-dial, which, curiously enough, has the hour-lines marked from 8 a.m. to ​4 p.m. only. Further on is the church of St. Michael, famous for its thirteenth century sun-dial, which marks the hour divisions with crosses for 12, 9, and 5. A mile or two out beyond Winchester, on the Southampton-road, is the Hospice of St. Cross.
There is good authority for stating that there is no institution now existing in Great Britain which has been allowed to remain more than 700 years, that is so little changed in its original constitution as is the Hospice of St. Cross. It comprises two distinct foundations—that of Bishop Henry of Blois, grandson of William the Conqueror (1136), and of Cardinal Beaufort (1444), and both are now under the one Master of St. Cross. On the greensward facing these "castles of peace and rest" stands the dial on fluted shaft, a sketch of the upper part of which is given.
Above the porch of the fine old Norman church at Bakewell, in the Peak district, a church which is full of interest as being the burying place of the Vernons, and the Manners of Haddon Hall, is to be seen an oval stone dial dated 1793, on the upper part of which is the motto, "In such an hour as ye think not the Son of Man cometh." The soft stone is fast crumbling away, and it will soon be a thing of the past. Further north lies Castleton Church, with its old library and its finely carved pews, well worth a visit. In the churchyard is a dial, the plate of which projects far beyond its upholding column, and at its edge is serrated, Norman fashion; "Hora Pars Vita" (The Hour is a portion of Life) is the motto engraved upon the plate. The same inscription is to be found fixed to what appears to have been a cross in a church-yard in the Isle of Wight, dated 1815; also in Thursley Church, Surrey; on a church in Northumberland at Kirkwelpington, 1764; and on a church at Tavistock, dated 1814.
The singularly beautiful church at Tideswell, generally known as the Cathedral of the Peak, built in the latter half of the fourteenth century, and boasting one of the earliest Perpendicular towers in England, possesses, too, a dial, surmounted on a stately stone shaft and circular steps, the total height being about nine feet. It is in somewhat neglected condition, and the ​name of the man who presumably restored it (J. Tattersath, 1812) is graven on the base.
Hearing that in Canon Bowles' garden in the Close, Salisbury, was to be found a fine cruciform dial, bearing the motto, "Quam cito jucundi practeriere dies" (How quickly the pleasant days have passed away), erected by that gentleman in 1829, I eagerly went, hoping to get a drawing of it. Sad to say, the motto seemed to have been prophetic. I stood in the cathedral by the tombstone which marked his last resting place, and hunted long, but in vain, in the dear old-world garden which had once been his but saw no sign of any dial.
Within a hundred yards, at the other end of the Close, painted high up on a wall (dated 1749) about four feet square, is a dial with the tradition—"Life's but a walking shadow" (Macbeth, Act V. scene v.). James Harris, the author of "Hermes," was a Salisbury man; he died in 1780, and there are many reasons for believing that he erected this dial. On the tower of St. Martin's Church, Salishbury, almost completely effaced, and with the gnomon gone, may be traced the wreck of what was once a fine dial.
There is a story told that once of the Deans of Bangor had a faithful but certainly somewhat irascible old gardener, who used to keep away numbers of his master's troublesome visitors by saving to those he saw about, "Go about your business." After the gardener's death the Dean had engraved upon the dial in the garden the curt injunction of his faithful servant, but in this wise:—
"GOA BOW TYO URB US IN ESS 1838."
The amusing part being that it was usually mistaken to be a Welsh motto.
At Poole's Cavern—an enormous natural excavation in the carboniferous limestone of Derbyshire, running for several hundred yards under a hill about half a mile beyond Buxton—was found in 1865, buried some seven or eight feet in stalagmite, a mass of wonderfully interesting remains—Samian ware, Roman glass; coins of the time of Tryan, Faustinia, Nerva; flint implements, weapons, rings; and a Roman bronze pocket sun-dial, in perfect preservation, the same size as depicted in the sketch given. These fascinating "finds" are still to be seen in the quaint little private museum adjoining the cavern entrance. The cavern traditionally derives its name from an outlaw named Poole, who, in the reign of Henry VI, made it his place of abode and plunder depository.
​Dr. Doran tells us in his Life of the author of "Night Thoughts," that Dr. Young erected a dial in his garden, with the motto, "Eheu fugaces!" (Alas, how fleeting!); very shortly afterwards thieves entered his garden, and certainly proved the wisdom of his words by carrying the dial bodily away.
Perhaps I cannot close these brief notes better than by quoting the beautiful lines John Greenleaf Whittier wrote for inscription on the sun-dial of a friend
"With warning hand I mark Time's rapid flight
From life's glad morning to its solemn night; Yet, through the dear God's love, I also show There's light above me by the shade below."
Warrington Hogg.