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 is located in the walled garden. The public can have access but the key must be obtained from Lydiard House reception. This is a replica dial [set up by Harriet James] of the original by J Sisson, which is on display in Lydiard House. The dial carries the Coat of Arms of Henry 1st Viscount St John (died 1742) impaling those of Pelissary (for his second wife, Angelica Magdalena), beneath a Viscount’s coronet.
The hours are marked with Roman numerals IIII - XII - IIII - VIII, read from the outside, and there is a split noon, and half, quarter and eighth-hour divisions. There is a 16-point compass rose and an Equation of Time ring.
The large diameter baluster pedestal is of Bathstone ashlar, and sits on a small square plinth, overall about 800 high, and probably 17th century. A 1766 plan of the park marks a dial in the large walled garden. This was almost certainly the Sisson dial, which was relocated to the present position of the replica in the 20th century, before 1948.
