How I got interested in sundials

Colin McVean

Chris St. J. Daniel

In the beginning, I suppose my interest and knowledge of sundials was much the same as anyone else's. I visualised a sundial as a quaint garden ornament of the horizontal kind. I cannot actually recall setting eyes on a sundial in my early years, or even during my first 1 3-year career, when I was at sea. It was only on joining the staff of the National Maritime Museum, at Greenwich, in the Department of Navigation and Astronomy, that I was brought into real contact with sundials.

I joined the museum in 1964 and my principal job was to give lectures in navigation and astronomy in the planetarium. This was installed in 1965 in The South Building of the Old Royal Observatory, a newly acquired part of the museum. The Old Royal Observatory was being renovated, since the buildings had fallen into a state of disrepair when the Royal Greenwich Observatory moved out to Herstmonceux Castle in Sussex.

The new buildings and galleries, housing the astronomical and sundial instrument collections, were opened to the public in 1 967. In this year, as a Research Assistant I, I was given day-to- day charge of sundials, under the authority of an Assistant Keeper, Derek Howse, now, amongst other things, well- known for his work GREENWICH TIME AND THE LONGITUDE. My head of department was David W Waters, author of THE ART OF NAVIGATION IN ENGLAND IN ELIZABETHAN AND EARLY STUART TIMES and it was his decision to give me the curatorial responsibility for the sundial collection. This was no doubt intended to give me a broader interest in curatorial matters in addition to my lecturing duties.

At first, I cannot say that this new responsibility met with much enthusiasm; but I saw, bought and read a beautiful looking book called SUNDIALS OLD AND NEW by A P Herbert (Sir Alan Herbert) with, incidentally, a Foreword by David W Waters. The author's original title for the book was FUN WITH THE SUN, but its purpose was really for instruction and not amusement. Nevertheless, it was written in an easy-to-read style, well-printed on nice paper, in a hard-back, cloth-bound comfortable format.

The book was first published early in 1967, at the price of 63 shillings, or three guineas, i.e. £3 3s Od, or £3.15 in current terms. Its current catalogue price is £60.OO! By a happy coincidence, Sir Alan Herbert paid a visit to the National Maritime Museum on 18th May 1967, when he was shown the buildings of the Old Royal Observatory by David Waters. He kindly autographed my copy of his book.

Yet there was another influence that came to bear on me in this same year. For some reason or another, with Alan Stimson, a close colleague of mine, I made several visits to the British Museum to the Department of British and Mediaeval Antiquities, where I was introduced to Philip G Coole, a noted horological expert. Indeed, I think these visits must have been sanctioned as a means of acquiring some of his knowledge and expertise, in the furtherance of my own education in the subject of sundials. Philip wrote to me on 20th November 1967, posing various questions on dialling matters, that he thought required some research. His letter appears to be the first document that relates to what was to be my future interest and subsequent career in the field of sundials. He had proposed that Alan Stimson and I should each write a book; Alan on ALTITUDE MEASURING INSTRUMENTS and myself on SUNDIALS.

At the time, the suggestion that I should write a book, on a subject about which I knew virtually nothing, was not only a daunting prospect but an almost petrifying experience at such an early stage in my museum career. However, Philip Coole was actually seeking someone who knew nothing about the subject, since such a person would necessarily have a fresh approach, uncluttered by pre-conceived ideas and the desire to include quantities of extraneous material.

In 1968 I was attempting some elementary sundial design work and in 1969 I received an acknowledgement in the book SUNDIALS by Frank Cousins. Also in 1969 the National Maritime Museum had set up on the south wall of the Meridian Building, in the Old Royal Observatory, the first of a series of sundials designed by Dr Tadeusz Przypkowski, the Polish doyen off gnomonics. It was a mean-time noon dial, but no-one understood it, which is not surprising as it was back to front! I had the job of resolving the problem and succeeded in doing so, which brought me an invitation to Poland to stay with Dr Przypkowski and study his collections.

I suppose, by this time, I was 'hooked' on sundials, but it was not until 1972 that I succeeded in producing my first official sundial design-the armillary symbol of the Nautical Institute-and my first article on the subject: SUNDIALS-THE COMMON VERTICAL IN NW KENT. This ultimately became a Maritime Monograph, in the National Maritime Museum series, under the title SUNDIALS ON WALLS, in 1978. By this time I had designed my now well-known 'dolphin' sundial, for the Queen's Silver Jubilee, in 1977. Since 1986, I have enjoyed designing and writing about sundials 'full-time', supported by a pension: it has been said that much of my 'work' is pure self- indulgence!