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.
The dial was presented to Bedford Grammar School in 1908. The main plate has below the ’XII’ mark the motto: ’Time was is past, thou canst not it recall / Time is thou hast, employ the portion small’ (Lydia Sigourney, 1791 1865), and at the opposite side ’Pilkington & Gibbs Ltd Preston’. Stepped down below the ’XII’ mark, read from the outside, is ’G J GIBBS INVENIT’ (. . . found it), and on the opposite side of the vertical edge is the P&G Serial Number ’148’. On the EOT date adjustment plate is ’Presented / by / G J GIBBS O B M / 1908’.
The hours on the main plate run anti-clockwise, read from the outside, V - XII - IV - VII, and the minute scale has clockwise Arabic numerals 0 10 20 30 40 50 60, read from the inside.
The dial was seen on an eBay advertisement in December 2023: https://www.ukaa.com/
so the present location is not known.
