BRIDOL is the British Sundial Society's Register of Fixed and Mass Dials, which gives detail and photographs of about 8000 fixed sundials and 3000 mass dials in the UK.
Some of these are in private gardens, but the majority are publicly available.
This dial over the South porch is famed more for its gnomon than anything else. It has Death as a supporter, depicted as a skeleton carrying an hourglass in one hand and what Milton described as "th’ abhorred shears" in the other. It is a copper dial and has intriguing traces to suggest that there may once have been more to see than there is now. The circle in the arch and below in fact depicts the arms of King George III (first period). Still just visible are three fleurs de lys in the upper right segment; in the lower right segment a lion rampant with two lions passant guardant and a horse at the lowest point; and in the lower left segment an Irish harp .
When Mrs Crowley drew the dial in 1957 she included the fleur de lys patterns and also what she drew as a unicorn but is in fact the rampant lion.
Refs: ’Book of Sundials’, Gatty; ’Sundials and Roses of Yesterday’, Alice Morse Earle; ’Mrs Crowley’s Sundial Sketchboooks’ ed John Lester; ’Ye Sundial Booke’, Henslow,Foyle Ltd, London, 1935, p390; Cowham, M, ’Gnomon Supporters’, BSS Bulletin, 21(iv), pp40-42, December 2009.
