Here be Tim and Erin on a church-crawl, peering out from behind the shamelessly over-the-top south door (which dates from around 1120 CE) at Kirby Bedon St. Andrew's Church.
Dig those doubled-over C-straps! That blacksmith was trippin' balls!
Anyhoo … That's not why we're here. Take a look to the right of the cushion capital of the right-hand pilaster and you'll see what was quite common on mediæval churches: a sweet little sundial.
Here's a closer look at it.
To check when to start the service, they'd stick a stick in the hole and read off the time, though only of course if the sun was shining.
Trouble is, someone built a porch over the door in the fifteenth century and the poor little sundial has not worked since. Starved of sunshine it has sat sadly these six-hundred years, recklessly robbed of its raison d'être.
Sometimes, I surprise even myself at the sheer, mind-numbing dullness of things that fascinate me.
7 comments:
Among the videos I watched during the shutdown was, well, a Zoom meeting about Medieval graffiti. I've even got a little book about the topic. I don't know where it is off-hand, but I don't remember a sundial being mentioned either during the Zoom chat or in the book. hmm, I'll have to find it ...
Thank you for that diverting dose of alliteration Dive! This is not dull at all but a delightful detail.
Speedway, you just reminded me of my ex-sister-in-law (to quote the old Thomas Dolby song, Airhead, "Her friends think she's a dumb blonde, but they don't know she dyes her hair"), who, on seeing an ancient sundial asked me "Does that thing still work?"
There were sundials on many mediæval churches; other than a rooster, it was pretty much the only way to tell what time of day it was.
Hey, Pea. I recently got hold of a book on Anglo-Saxon alliterative poetry and I just LUUUURVE reading it aloud. You know me :)
"Sometimes, I surprise even myself at the sheer, mind-numbing dullness of things that fascinate me." Yeah, Dive, and I sat in on the little talk about medieval graffiti because of your castle posts. I mean, who knew? There's a guy in Italy who shows videos of real estate offerings in Tuscany. One morning, I was watching one in which he showed a bit of, guess what? Graffiti carved into a bit of stone! It was very like a bit shown in the Zoom talk, so maybe I'd learned something.
I get a newsletter that reminds me of allllll the things there are in the world that interest somebody, just not me. I find their interests boring, yet they are being paid, getting grants, and, mebbe, saving lives through their work. And your work is helping to save a castle - and a stone capital.
The opposite of dull: fascinating!
I feel really sad for the poor little sundial, deprived of the sun.
Having said that, my ex. sis-in-law (a stereotypical "blonde") pointed to the big sundial on the south wall of St.Peter Mancroft Church and asked, "Does that still work?"
Speedway, we found so much more hidden graffiti in the castle; we've exposed it all now and made a big feature of it.
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