St Michael’s Kirk, Musselburgh

By analogy with double-horizontal sundials, this is a double-vertical. The primary gnomon is polar oriented and the horizontal strut which supports it serves as a secondary gnomon. The shadow of this secondary gnomon indicates solar azimuth, but only on the days of an equinox. The dial plate has upright Roman hour numerals VI - XII - IV - VI, with a noon gap, half hour markers with fleur-de-lys, quarter hour markers with a short line and dot, and 5 minute marks. There are seven declination lines with zodiac symbols. Below the horizontal strut which serves as a secondary gnomon are 17 points of the southern half of a 32-point compass (marked as E, EbS, ESE, etc, round to WSW, WbS, W) with radial lines marked out from two centres at the foot of the strut. ’Sic transit gloria Mundi’ is inscribed across the top in cursive italic script. Beneath this is ’ARCHIBALD HANDASYDE’ / ’Piscatorii fecit’ / ’MDCC XXXV’. The dial plate is light coloured sandstone with moulded edges, supported by good iron brackets (not visible in the photograph, but see SRN 1526 for the companion dial with similar mounting). The sandstone is spalling around the gnomon attachment, and there is rust staining from the gnomon. This vertical S dial and SRN 1526 (vertical W) are mounted on the same wall. (The former church, for which this dial was made, was demolished in 1803, and the present church was finished in 1806.) Ref: David MacGibbon and Thomas Ross: The Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland from the Twelfth to the Eighteenth Century, pp 362-363. David Douglas, Edinburgh, MDCCCXCII