Ardington and Lockinge Millennium Sundial, Ardington

The Ardington Millennium Stones.

Two enormous and most unusual dials set in woodland donated to the village to celebrate the millennium. The first you come to is a noon mark consisting of a curved mirror and a standing stone about 200m to the south. According to the plaque, at exactly noon by the sun – when the sun is due south – a flash of light is visible at the southern stone. Well, perhaps but (in 2012) the avenue has become overgrown and obscures the lightpath. The southern stone, quite near the road, has an Equation of Time plaque relating solar time to GMT. Note that it is correct only on the Greenwich meridian and should be adjusted by five and a half minutes for Ardington. Unfortunately, the axis of this dial does not run due north-south (it is about 30 degrees off), so the mirror is turned about 14 degrees, with its cylindrical axis horizontal. If the dial axis were north-south it would be accurate, but as it is not, the flash is up to 20 minutes early or late at different seasons. It could have been made more accurate by tilting the mirror or using a conical mirror.

Up the hill above the noon mark is the second dial. This has 13 pairs of standing Purbeck stones arranged in a huge semicircle around a central disk representing the sun. Each pair forms a vertical slit through which sunlight passes briefly each hour (6am to 6pm) at midsummer. The photograph shows the noon pair, looking due north. The plaque has a graph showing the exact time when the sun shines through each slit on any other day of the year. Three small plaques just north of this pair show the extent of their shadow at noon on the solstices and equinox.
Another stone just north of this one was pierced so as to admit the first sunlight rays at 8:12am GMT on 1 Jan 2000 (popularly regarded as the dawn of the third millennium).

Further disks set into the ground round the sun disk represent the positions of the planets as they were on 1 Jan 2000, with details of their orbits on informative plaques. Pluto is included as it was then regarded as a planet.

Both dials were designed and made in Purbeck stone and stainless steel by the well-known local sundial maker David Harber.

There is a free car park on School Road a short distance to the west of the noon dial. Walk up the avenue past the mirror to find the standing stone semicircle.

A bonus is a mass dial in the village church – on the east side of the old south door.