Greetings, fellow dialists, I wonder how many of our subscribers give talks to local groups, clubs and societies. I have been doing this for a number of years and have evoked an interest in dials among a number of people and even gained an occasional member to the British Sundial Society.
In my talk I only describe dials from my locality in the far north of England. My region is not particularly outstanding in its dials but has a few noteworthy ones. First is the Anglo-Saxon dial at Escomb in County Durham which is believed to date from about seven hundred. It vies with Bewcastle as the oldest dial in situ in the country. Indeed I think we have in England only a single earlier fragment, a bit of a Roman dial of unknown provenance. Next we have a late Anglo-Saxon or early Norman dial, at Pittington, dated earlier than eleven hundred. It is divided into double hours. Then follow the crude scratch dials of the later Middle Ages, but I know of only four such locally; they are much rarer than in some other parts of the land. Among gnomon dials there is the dial made by George Stephenson, the famous railway engineer, for his cottage. Although George constructed it the calculation was probably beyond George's capacity and, astonishingly, was successfully undertaken by his thirteen year old son, Robert, who I fancy was in later life a better engineer than his father. Then there is the dial made by Wigham Richardson, the shipbuilder, for the entrance to his shipyard. Richardson was a substantial partner in the building of the famous liner "Mauretania" of 1907, a ship which held the Atlantic Blue Riband for twenty two years. He also wrote the appendix on dial construction for the later editions of Mrs. Gatty's "Book of Sundials". His dial survives in the region because, following the liquidation of the shipyard a few years ago, the dial was put up for auction in London, when the action of some British Sundial Society members enabled it to be brought back to Tyneside. My talk extends from the eighth century Escomb dial through a local Pilkington and Gibbs heliochronometer of around 1905 down to the fine six metre high dial designed by our Tony Moss a couple of years ago and erected on an artificial hill overlooking the North Sea. My talk lasts about an hour during which I show about sixty slides which I've found to be the right number, selected from the many I have. I do not make a charge, preferring to regard it as part of the "gift economy" so essential in this material world, but I restrict my travelling to a radius of about fifty miles. I give about six deliveries a year, some e.g. to societies of old men fending off loneliness, some to bright groups of professionals and academics. Perhaps others would care to outline their experience. Frank, 55N 1W. -- Frank Evans
