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to functional adequacy. The last scratch dials made appear to
have paid scant attention to appearance. The (monochrome and
skeletal) evolution of scratch dials, as they appear today, is
chronicled via examples in Fig. 1.
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
Scratch dials are the earliest time keeping artefacts to survive
in any number. Vernacular rather than professional in
construction, they are rich in social context. Their demise
mirrors the arrival of the modern age. Yet they are poorly
understood, not widely appreciated and little researched.
Some readers may already have diagnosed the
cause. Research in this area has a voracious appetite for data;
data that is not easily or quickly garnered. Although this paper
has shed a new and more robust and detailed insight on the
subject and the Kentish scene in particular, it too has been
constrained by data availability. The next step will be to
better understand the regional and national context through
comparative analysis of a dozen well surveyed and recorded
counties in The British Sundial Society’s mass dial database.
There can be no doubt Kent’s scratch dial
heritage is a rich one, despite only a fraction of it having
survived the rigours of centuries of church rebuilding and
weathering. Kent’s recording is not yet complete. Time is
running out, particularly for the oldest scratch dials. We are
one of the last generations of antiquarians with the opportunity
to adequately record this aspect of our heritage – a heritage
whose ecclesiological, horological and socio-economic
significance we have barely commenced to decipher.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Tribute of the highest order is due to Gerald Winzar’s
meticulous recordings: as is appreciation of Pat Winzar’s
generosity in encouraging their use and availability. Thanks
also to Dick Chambers for permitting use of the interim listing
of his photographic survey; Tony Wood for making The British
Sundial Society’s mass dial database available and other
advice; and my daughter Philippa for diligently managing this
paper’s production.
ENDNOTES
1 Listings, recordings and
discussion took place in the publications and proceedings of the
county archaeological societies. No substantive reference to
scratch dials has been found in Archaeologia Cantiana for
this period.
2 E. Horne, Primitive Sun Dials
or Scratch Dials. Containing a list of those in Somerset,
1917. See also E. Horne, Scratch Dials. Their description and
history, 1929 – an expanded version, excluding the
Somerset listing.
3 A.R. Green, Sundials, Incised
Dials or Mass-Clocks, 1926.
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