Shedding light on sundials

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Local historian Maxwell Craven explores the history of sundials and their manufacture by one of Derby’s leading clockmakers.

I SUPPOSE that the best known sundial in Derbyshire is that erected over the porch at Eyam parish church, a highly sophisticated piece of 18th century refinement of a very ancient method of reckoning the time.

While use of shadows to tell the time goes back into the mists of antiquity, the earliest sundial in this country is thought to be one in the museum at Chesters, a small village on Hadrian’s Wall.

It is a stone with scratched gradations on it intended to be read by inserting a staff or similar – called a style – into a hole placed where the angled divisions seem to converge.

The earliest specimens of these scratch sundials to be found in Derbyshire are on the exterior walls of medieval churches.

They are so simple that they are impossible to date stylistically, although the one at Upper Langwith Church, inside the (south) porch, is believed to have been put up before the 14th century.

There are a good few of these scratch dials in Derbyshire, all on parish churches: Alsop-en-le-Dale (two); Bradbourne (on the exterior of a porch of a later 15th century date); Clowne; Horsley (two); Kedleston; Mackworth (four, one quite late, with a cheerful inscription beneath it: “Ut hora sic fugit vita hominis”, roughly “Thus fly the hours like the life of man”); Marston Montgomery; North Wingfield; Pentrich; Repton; Spondon (three); Stanton-by-Dale; Steetley (two); Taddington and Whitwell.

When churches were lime-washed over in white or light shades in medieval times, there is also evidence to suggest that painted scales were used, most traces of which eventually vanished, along with the covering; hence, not every church has a scratch dial.

The dial on the parish church was probably the only indication people had, in those days, of time, bar their own observations of the position of the sun.

This situation persisted for ordinary folk right into the 18th century, long after the local lord had acquired a table clock or similar mechanical method of telling the time.

Yet, the lord, as patron, more often than not, of the church, frequently took steps to replace the old scratch dial with a wall sundial which had a permanent register and gnomon (pointer).

These may be seen at St Wilfrid, West Hallam, a fine but extremely simple one at Chapel-en-le-Frith and quite a late one, with a round dial, at Edlaston, near Ashbourne. Nor are these the only ones.

The finest anonymous example is on the church at Kedleston, set in a baroque aedicule frame at eaves level, with “We shall” over the dial (die all – geddit?).

It is also exceptionally unusual in that it is set on the east wall of the church and, therefore, reads, not radially, but in graduated parallel lines, the shadow being cast by a gnomon or style, itself almost parallel to the dial and raised on a pair of dainty metal brackets.

Because of this, only the hours six to 10 are shown. The traditional explanation of its position is that it was put up for the benefit of the Kedleston Hall staff, whose quarters in the previous house looked out onto the church at this point.

Dials were also erected on buildings and in public places. While several country houses had dials set on them, there are some on humbler abodes.

There is, for instance, a farm near Brailsford – appropriately named Sundial Farm – which boasts another one of baroque type, set angled to the sun on a south-west facing end wall of a barn below the dovecote.

Its curly pediment suggests that it may well have started off somewhere else rather grander.

Another example graced the roof of the Stonehouse, 37 Nottingham Road, Codnor, using two sides of a coal measures sandstone cube topped by a ball finial. The styles have long since rotted away.

The house is dated 1649, but the dial’s surviving Arabic numerals look late 17th century at the earliest.

My late friend and former colleague Roy Hughes suggested that it might be the work of James Woolley, of Codnor, a notably fine clockmaker of the period, making it not earlier than c1716.

Unfortunately, it is seriously decayed – coal measures sandstone does not weather particularly well – and was, I believe, replaced by a poor copy, the process of replication having also been hampered by the poor preservation of the original.

A similarly cuboid one, topped by a ball, once stood on top of a baroque column in Allestree, which survived long enough to have been drawn by that antiquarian George Bailey, in the 1880s.

When it was removed, I am not sure. Doubtless, there were others like this, modelled on the famous Seven Dials in London.

The grandest house to have a wall sundial was Wingfield Manor. Indeed, if you go to visit the ruins of this stupendous 15th century mansion, you will notice at least three scattered around and, 150 years ago, when photographed by Richard Keene, there were more.

After the house was severely pasted by Cromwell’s artillery in the Civil War, Wingfield Manor was granted to his agent, Immanuel Halton, a Cumbrian gentleman, by its then owner, the Earl of Arundel.

Halton dabbled in mathematical and astronomical experiments, including the venting of his penchant for improving sundials. He embellished his new home and the romantic ruins around it with several sundials, hence those which remain today.

He was one of the great pioneers of algebra and took the young John Flamsteed – the future first Astronomer Royal – under his wing.

Flamsteed, while still living with his family in Queen Street, Derby, later made useful modifications to Halton’s “improved sundial”, although it has long since vanished.

Flamsteed’s legacy seems to have been passed on to the young John Whitehurst, either directly or possibly through a protegee like James Woolley, of Codnor.

Either way, clockmaker Whitehurst was very soon providing sundials for his clients and, indeed, one at Allestree has been attributed to him.

Whitehurst was born in 1713, the son of a Congleton clockmaker who was probably trained in Liverpool. He came to Derby in 1736 and gained his freedom to trade in September 1737.

On his death in 1788, he was succeeded in the family clockmaking firm by his nephew, John II, who died in 1834 to be succeeded by his son, John III.

Throughout its 119-year existence, the firm that Whitehurst established made sundials.

The tradition of placing such instruments on the south wall of churches survived, as exemplified by that on St Modwen’s Church, Burton-upon-Trent, a particularly delightful example of slate, dating from 1785.

Whitehurst, despite making a living at clock manufacture, was an important scientific figure, as well as a man with detailed interests in geology, meteorology and astronomy.

Consequently, a really sophisticated dial, like that at Eyam, would seem to owe much to him.

Datable to 1765-1770, its immediate instigators are known, as is the name of the carver, but there can be little doubt as to the identity of the designer of the famous dial.

At that time, Canon Seward was rector of Eyam, appointed by the patron, the Duke of Devonshire.

Seward, a canon of Lichfield, was well known to Whitehurst, while the Duke himself had, by this date, already commissioned a clock from the Derby man.

Whitehurst also made a good number of what we might call domestic dials – simple engraved bronze dials intended to be set on a plinth or similar in the garden.

This was part of the stock-in-trade of most competent clockmakers in those days, but the earlier examples tend to be anonymous, like one dated 1644 from a local source and once in Derby Museum’s collections.

Oddly, there are very few recorded by Derbyshire makers except Whitehurst, his circle and family – or if there are more, they have not surfaced.

Whitehurst himself made a wide variety of types, from simple dials, which just told the time, to amazingly sophisticated ones packed, to the initiated, with potential information, astronomical, seasonal and topographical.

His later ones and those by his successors have particularly plain gnomons set onto an inserted disc, so that even when the maker’s name has weathered off, the essential clue is often there.

Earlier ones bore more decorative gnomons fixed in the usual way.

There are one or two public ones, like those in the churchyards at Morley and Thorpe, the latter set for latitude 53 degrees exactly, dated 1767 and set on a plinth so high as to be usable only by someone on horseback.

It was also at some time moved from elsewhere – perhaps the stable yard of a great house – for its present position is actually at 53 degrees and 3 minutes and Whitehurst was nothing if not a stickler for precision.

The Morley dial was set up by the Rev Dr Richard Wilmot, the incumbent, in 1762.

The Moravian settlement at Ockbrook also has one in front of its pretty chapel of 1750s’ date.

Numerous country houses had them, too: Tissington – very early and associated with the installation of the turret clock in the stables in 1738; Calke Abbey; Park Hall; Barlborough; Flintham Hall, Nottinghamshire and others.

Some houses long since demolished are also known to have had sundials, for, in 1775, Whitehurst wrote to the Rev Dr Thomas Gresley concerning his sundial for Netherseal Hall which would “soon be ready”; one wonders where it went when the house was knocked down in the 1930s.

The tradition of making sundials was carried on under Whitehurst’s short-lived and self-appointed successor, James Wright, his wife’s nephew.

One example signed by him recently came to light after being sold at Bonhams in September 2003.

A wall-mounted dial by John II dated 1800 was observed in 1938 on the wall of Victorian “Seathorn” house, Shardeloes Road, Skegness.

The house was built by the Eastwood family, Derby iron founders, but from where the sundial came remains obscure.

A very fine domestic example, dated 1812, in Derby Museum’s Summerfield collection, has a complex and beautifully engraved dial, mirrored by one formerly on display at Locko Park.

The museum also has an example, dated 1834, signed “Whitehurst & Son/Derby”.

From 1809 to 1834 all instruments were signed in this way instead of just “Whitehurst/Derby”, this being the period between the end of the apprenticeship of John III and the death of his father when they were partners.

One or two other local country houses have similar examples, one dated as early as 1792 and probably supplied to Erasmus Darwin, no less.

A fairly simple example, set on an octagonal stone plinth,was sold recently at Bamford’s auctioneers.

The provenance was unclear, but a few clues suggest that it might have originally been made for the Earl of Harrington’s new gardens at Elvaston Castle in the 1830s or when the house was re-modelled to the designs of James Wyatt in 1813.

After the end of the Whitehurst firm, I know of no signed dials and the trend was then to produce imitations of 17th century types to varying standards.

One quite respectable one, however, was done in approximate Whitehurst style and unveiled by the Earl of Wessex when he opened Pickford’s House Museum in Friar Gate, Derby, in 1990.