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.
On the SW corner of the building is the painted kneeling figure of Moses. His right hand points to the gilded sun in glory, and his left holds a stone tablet on which is carved the name of God in three tongues (Greek, Latin & English). Below are two dials, each in a stone frame, painted white. The left hand dial declines 83 deg west, and the right 20 deg west, and both carry upright Arabic hour numerals with hour and half hour lines.
The sundials are a Victorian re-interpretation of ornamentation on the façade in the time of James Mossman, the Royal Goldsmith in the 1560s. The Victorian architect was Hippolyte Blanc (1844 - 1917), and the sculptor Handyside Ritchie (1804 - 1870). They used a much worn pre-existing figure (previously believed wrongly to have been John Knox).
Refs: McGibbon & Ross, Castellated & Domestic Architecture of Scotland, 1889-92, Vol 5, pp374-6. Ross states there were no dials marked out in his day but Gatty (1890) refers to dial faces.
2012
2012
2012
2012
John Knox’s House, 43 - 45, High Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1SR, Lothian Region
