20-Mar-2025
March 2025 Editor : J.Mike Shaw
CHAIRMAN
Welcome to 2025. In my part of the country, there has been a prolonged period with overcast skies. I am looking forward to some sunshine!
Winchester 2025
The Conference Team give further details below of Winchester 2025 and their flyer is bundled in with the Bulletin and this Newsletter.
BSS Award Scheme for Excellent Sundials
Another item below refers to the seventh quinquennial Sundial Awards Scheme. There is an associated flyer. Our Webmaster, Anton Leach, has kindly agreed to place all entries on our website and David Hawker has kindly agreed to display a selection of the entries at the 2026 Conference.
December and March Bulletin Follow-ups
The December Bulletin Follow-up was well attended with much entertaining comment and discussion. I was most grateful to Martins Gills for presenting the Postscript which included a neat application of spherical triangles. The next Bulletin Follow-up will be in late April. The date will be announced by email. If you missed any of the Follow-ups you can find them all on the BSS YouTube channel at: youtube.com/@the-BSS
Newbury 2025
Chris Lusby Taylor will be our host for this year's Newbury Meeting, taking over this important role from David Pawley who has now retired.
Please put the start time and date, 10am on Saturday 27th September, in your diaries. We shall meet in the customary venue, Sutton Hall in Stockcross, near Newbury.
Frank King
THE 2025 CONFERENCE
The major forthcoming event in the BSS calendar is the conference in Winchester which, this year, runs from Tuesday 8 April to Thursday 10 April. Oliver Cooke, Curator of Horology at the British Museum, has confirmed that he will give the Andrew Somerville Memorial Lecture.
In addition to the Andrew Somerville Lecture we currently have talks promised by Fred Sawyer, Geoff Parsons, Frank King and Nick Orders with others pending! We have 29 people registered so far.
Full details explaining how to Register for the Conference and how to reserve a room in the Conference Hotel are given in the Winchester 2025 Notice, which is bundled in with this Newsletter.
The Conference Team
conference@sundialsoc.org.uk
THE SEVENTH BSS AWARD SCHEME FOR EXCELLENT SUNDIALS
Most members will know that every five years we invite entries from anyone who has completed and installed a new sundial or restored an old one. Details are given in a flyer bundled in with this Newsletter. The principal requirement is that the projects must have been completed between 1 January 2021 and 31 December 2025; otherwise, this is an open-to-anyone scheme.
The awards will be in the form of certificates.
MEMBERSHIP
We would like to welcome a new member to the Society from Buckingham.
WEB MASTER
Work on the Website continues. The current project is to transfer the Bulletin Archive to the new site.
This is a long way from being ready, but if you are interested you can see a preview of what is being done at: https://test.sundialsoc.org.uk/bulletin/the-bulletin-archive/
The log in name 'bss" and password '123'
Currently the plan is to put all except the last 8 issues online and made publicly available. There is a possibility that more recent ones could be accessed with a password, depending on whether there is any interest in this from members. Any thoughts and comments would be appreciated,
Anton Leach webmaster@sundialsoc.org.uk
MASS DIALS
Dial recordings continue to come in at a steady rate. Some are for dials that are new to the register and some are for previously recorded dials. These are all welcome especially when accompanied by good digital pictures taken square on to the dial.
One email was from Colin Paterson of Nuneaton Library who had found some copies of drawings of mass dials on Nuneaton Parish Church from the 1930s. There are 12 (or possibly 13) of them.
Another email contained a picture of what might be two oddly positioned dials inside the church at Great Kimble. If they are dials they are now on their side in the stone at the top of the arch over a doorway but inside the church.
Ben Jones
LIBRARY
The last three years of the BSS Bulletin (Volumes 34 (2022). 35 (2023), 36 (2024) ) and NASS Compendium (Volumes 29 (2022). 30 (2023), 31 (2024) ) were bound during January. These will eventually be housed with the others at Bromley House.
Anton Leach and David Hawker designawards@sundialsoc.org
Jackie Jones
Peter Ransom
BSS PHOTOGRAPHIC DISPLAY 2025
The BSS Conference at Winchester will be with us shortly and I would like to have another photographic display. Please look through those masses of sundial photographs that that are on your camera or phone or in your album and select a few for me to display. Please do it now so that you don't forget, I'd hate for you to miss this opportunity!
It would be nice if they were mounted and captioned with your name and with a title or just some information about the picture. This makes them more interesting to the delegates.
Please note that the copyright of the photographs will belong to the photographer but I trust that it is accepted that the BSS may use any or all of the submitted pictures, with or without captions, for promotional purposes and the furtherance of the Society's aims.
Send them to me at:
BSS Photographic Display, 309 Crofton Road, Orpington, Kent BR6 8EZ
David Hawker
Material for the next Newsletter, preferably as plain text e-mail, should be with me before 15th May 2025
newsletter@sundialsoc.org.uk