Select a site alphabetically from the choices shown in the box below. Alternatively, browse sculptural examples using the Forward/Back buttons.
Chapters for this volume, along with copies of original in-text images, are available here.
Object type: Sundial
Measurements:
Stone type: As Leake 3 except that the colour is yellow (10YR 7/6).
Plate numbers in printed volume: Ill. 1188
Corpus volume reference: Vol 6 p. 301
(There may be more views or larger images available for this item. Click on the thumbnail image to view.)
Appendix D item (sundials alleged to be of pre-Conquest date).
Leake 4 is a circular sundial cut into a stone set some 3 m from the ground and forming part of the buttress over the south door to the chancel. It is likely to be contemporary with the fabric of c. 1300, although a pre-Conquest date has been thought possible (Green 1928, 514–15; Okasha 1971, no. 71, where the plate is inverted). The dial measures about 28 cm across and is incised with two concentric circles and twenty-four lines radiating out from a gnomon-hole in the centre. The lower half corresponds to a division of the daylight into twelve hours. Within the annular strip between the two circles there is, at the top, an incised cross and, below, there are very weathered traces of indecipherable incised lettering. Although this dial is almost certainly much later, it recalls circular dials with surrounding inscriptions of the late Anglo-Saxon period at Aldbrough, Yorkshire, and Orpington, Kent, and the perhaps slightly later dial at Stow, Lincolnshire (Lang 1991, 123–4; Tweddle et al. 1995, 147–9; Everson and Stocker 1999, 258–9).
