CHAPTER VI

RENAISSANCE DIALS, DETACHED

"It were a happy life

To carve out dials quaintly, point by point."-3 Henry VI

Few things are more variable than the dates assigned to things found in places where the relics of different ages have become mixed together. The small stone cube of dials now in the Dover Museum was, when first dug up, thought to be Roman. It was the only one of the kind

known, and Roman relics had been found near the same spot, beside the desecrated church of St. Martin's-le-Grand. The church had once formed part of a Benedictine monastery, and it seems much more likely, from the appearance of the dials, that they were made by an ingenious Benedictine and set up on the wall of the monastery in the fourteenth or fifteenth century, than that they should have lain hidden since the Roman occupation.'

66

Arch. Journal," xxi. 262; "Yorks. Arch. Journal," v. ; "Strand Magazine, 1892."

The stone is a cube of fine-grained oolite, measuring 4 inches; on the top there is the remnant of an iron pin, and on the four sides are sunk dials, heart-shaped, oblong or cylindrical, and triangular. The stone seems to have been intended to stand on a small pillar or bracket. The sun-dials are calculated for latitude 47 degrees, so would not have told the time very accurately at Dover; but they may have served as models for other dial-makers, or the learned Benedictine may have had a special value for the relic of which we know nothing:

"We cannot buy with gold the old associations."

Compare with this cube the one found in the monastery at Ivy Church near Salisbury.' This is 5 inches in length and breadth, and 6 inches in height, but one inch had been inserted in a pillar, so that the cube is really perfect. The corners have been cut off, so that besides the top and the four sides eight spaces were available for dials. The south side has a heart-shaped hollow, like the Dover cube," with eleven hour lines in it, and the east face a double plane resembling an open book. "The west face has three excavations: a rectangular one with a plane base, a semi-lenticular one (the figure being obtained by bisecting a thick double convex lens), and a rectangular one with a curved base. The semi-lenticular excavation was filled with a small stylus, indicating the afternoon hours. The north face has a large sharply-cut crescent recumbent on the convex side." The eight triangular dials at the corners are much damaged, but each had a small stylus and excavation. On the top of the cube was a horizontal dial, and the metallic sub-stile is still visible and many of the Roman numerals marking the hours. The gnomon was evidently inclined to the latitude of the place, 50 degrees.

Dr. Dixon considered that the dial might be assigned to about the middle of the fourteenth century, when the learning of the Arabs had found its way into many parts of Europe. The little Dover dial probably came from France; here we find an English follower. Ivy Church was founded by Henry II., and for three- centuries was a flourishing home of Augustinian canons.

1

"Wilts. Arch. Mag.," "Notes on a Sun-dial," by Rev. R. Dixon, xxvii. 236.

N

These little cubes are probably our earliest English examples of detached dials, that is, dials which stand alone, unattached to walls or buildings. They also show the return to the earliest antique type, where the shadow is cast in hollow places scooped out of the stone, with hour lines drawn upon them. These sunk dials became varied in form to a degree unknown to the ancients. They were hemispherical, heart-shaped, cylindrical, triangular, oblique, and so forth, and to these were added, on the same stone, the plane, horizontal, vertical, reclining, and indeed almost every variety of dial. This combination of plane and sunk dials cut in stones which, whether great or small, were intended to stand alone, was developed till it became, not merely an ingenious instrument for ascertaining the time of day or for imparting scientific knowledge, but a decorative pillar, a work of art to be placed in courtyards, gardens, and public squares, at a time when the luxury of domestic architecture and the laying out of pleasure grounds began to be cultivated. These monumental dials were a product of the Renaissance.

Effigica speciosiffimi HOTOS. cap in pomario colleg

Corporis Chrifti Oxen

MERIDIES

10

Hanc Horoscopum Nice

elim mathematicus et Coll Corp Xp Socrus delineavır

insignis

ORIENS

KRATZER'S DIAL, CORPUS CHRISTI
COLLEGE GARDENS.

No country shows such magnificent examples as Scotland. If we take the English specimens first, it is because we incline to the belief that some of them are of earlier date, and that the history of one of these, now, alas, no longer in existence, can be certainly traced to the beginning of the sixteenth century.

This was the dial which has been already mentioned, made by Nicholas Cratcher, or Kratzer, for the garden at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, probably in some year between 1520 and 1530. The date of its removal is not known, but thanks to Robert Hegge, a scholar of Corpus in 1614, and "a prodigy of his time," says Wood, "for forward and good natural parts," we have a sketch of it, which we are enabled to reproduce here by the kindness of Dr. Thomas Fowler, now Vice-Chancellor of Oxford, in whose work on Corpus Christi College it originally appeared.

ch

Robert Hegge left behind him several MS. works, including two copies of a treatise on dials and dialling. He thus describes Kratzer's dial: "In this beautiful Alter (on wh Art has Sacrificed such varietie of Invention to the Deitie of the Sun) are twelve Gnomons, the Sun's fellow travellers, who like farr distant inhabitants, dwell some vnder y Aequinoctiall, some vnder the Poles, some in more temparat Climats: some vpon the plains in Plano, some vpon the Mountains in Convexo, and some in the vallies in Concavo. Here you may see the Aequin

octial dial the Mother of y rest, who hath the horizons of the paralel Sphere for her dubble Province, which suffer by course an half year's night: There the Polar dial wing'd with the lateral Meridian. Here you may behold the two fac'd Vertical dial which shakes hands with both Poles: There the Convex dial elevated in triumph vpon 4 iron arches: Here lastly the Concave dial which shews the Sun at noone the hemisphere of Night. In other dials neighbouring Clocks betray their errours, but in this consort of Dials informed with one Soul of Art, they move all with one motion and vnite with their stiles the prayse of the Artificer."

The old dial which stands on a low pedestal in front of the manor house of Westwood near Bradford-on-Avon, appears from its shape to

have carried on the tradition of Kratzer's work. It is covered also with dial hollows of various shapes, and has been thought to date from the seventeenth century. It has possibly been moved of late years into its

present position.

The dial-block at Great Fosters near Egham is of nearly the same shape as the above. It is about 2 feet high, 1 foot 8 inches wide, and 10 inches thick. It is placed on a pedestal built of alternate layers of stone of different size, after the style of the seventeenth century. All the faces of the block bear dials of different forms. At the top there is a short column with an iron rod, on which there was once a weather vane. Standing, as this dial-pillar does, in the centre of a smooth green lawn bordered with flowers, and in front of a noble old red-brick Tudor mansion, with great elm trees round it where the rooks build, it looks a fitting accompaniment to a "haunt of ancient peace." The history of the dial is not known, but it is generally called "Sir Francis Drake's dial." In all probability the connection is not with the great sea captain, but with one of the Drakes of Esher Place, which, in 1583, was bought by Richard, third son of John Drake, of Ashe in Devon, the head of the family from which Sir Francis sprang. Richard Drake was succeeded by his son Francis, and he in his turn had a son Francis, who lived at Walton-on-Thames, and died in 1634. These places are only a few miles from Great Fosters House, which about that time belonged to Sir Robert Foster, Chief Justice of the King's Bench, who died in 1663 and was buried at Egham. It is not clear when or from whom Sir Robert bought the place, but he was living there in 1643. Another tradition has it that the house once belonged to a Duke of Northumberland, who drew an armillary sphere, which still remains, on the staircase wall. This would probably be Sir Robert Dudley, son of the Earl of Leicester, on whom the title of Duke of Northumberland was bestowed by the Emperor Ferdinand. He was an ingenious mathematician,' and many clever instruments designed by him are preserved in the British Museum, at the Institute

1

GREAT FOSTERS.

He was the author of a great work on instruments of navigation, "Del Arcano del Mare," fol., Florence, 1646.