The Church Sundial

On the walls of many of the old parish churches of Sussex are found sundials that can date back to the Saxon age.

The ecclesiastical dial was also known as the ‘scratch’ dial as it consisted of notches cut into the church stone of the quoins and jambs of the windows and doors. A peg (often wood) was inserted into what was known as a style hole at a right angle to the face of the dial. This would cast a shadow to tell the hours of when church services would begin. The ecclesiastical dial was only used for this purpose and not to tell the hour of day, so there were fewer notches than the marks on a typical sundial. That was a completely different apparatus. The usual sundial was a metal plate facing in a southern direction with its gnomon mounted at a right angle to tell the time as the sun tracked from east to west during the day.

The scratch dial had a noon line and a line for 9 a.m., which were the usual hours for mass on Sundays, and holidays in the church. Another line was cut between the 2 and 3 o’clock positions which was the usual time for vespers, the start of which was earlier in the winter months than in summer. The scratch dial was usually found cut into the jambs and quoin stones of the south door or window in the chancel or the nave of the church. Locally, at St. Botolphs Church the dial is found on the eastern jamb of the low side window in the south wall of the chancel. The style hole is 5 foot above ground level and is angled so its peg would slope southwest. Circa 1919, the stunted end of the original peg was found to still be in the hole, presumably, like parts of the church itself, dating from Saxon times. The peg was made of laten, a mixture of zinc and copper, commonly used in the middle ages. The dial has a noon line that is 2.5 inches long and a medial line that is 5 inches long. There are four radial lines that end in small pits. There is a mark for the hour of mass and a mark for vespers. In Scandinavian countries, St. Boltolph is, rather fittingly, associated with the weather

Coombes Church has three dials on the middle stone of the eastern jamb of the priest’s door. The first dial and the uppermost of the two have no visible style hole. The dial has four lines and these are a noon line 4 inches in length, a mass line (9 am) that is marked, an intermediate line and a line east of the noon line to mark the hour for vespers. The second dial is a near copy of the first. The style hole is 0.5 inches in diameter. The length of the noon line is only 2 inches. There is a

St Bololph’s Church hole resembling a style hole on the same stone to the east of the second dial, but with no markings around it. This third dial may have had its marks painted onto it instead of being cut into the stone, and the marks have faded away over time.

At Edburton Church the dial was on the lowest of the stones of the western jamb of the low side window in the north wall of the chancel. The dial was 6 inches in diameter and the lines were in the lower quadrant between 6 a.m. and noon. By 1919 however the dial had been removed, possibly due to repair or alteration to the south wall of the church.

Source:

Sundials on West Sussex Churches by H Michell Whitley Sussex Archaeological collections 1919