Keble College, Oxford

The dial consists of stainless steel hour lines, numerals and a gnomon fixed to the third storey wall of the ARCO building in Keble College. The design is intended to suggest a turbine, a reference to Rolls Royce. The hour lines are tapering folded triangles. As they are polished and stand off from ther wall, time is read by observing the shadow on the wall of the gnomon and the hour lines. The Arabic numerals, from 6am to 4pm, are arranged around a rectangle enclosing the hour lines.The gnomon is also sheet stainless steel, with a circular ring nodus at its end. Both the shadow of its upper edge and of the centre of the nodus tell the time. A nodus is most commonly used in conjunction with solstice and equinox declination lines to show the season, but this dial has no declination lines. The shadow of the nodus falls on the bottom of the noon line at the summer solstice. The wall declines east of due south, so the substyle (the line on the wall under the gnomon) slopes down to the left of the noon line.The date, 2006, is inscribed above the dial. The 6am hour line is inscribed ’Fear no more the heat o’ the sun’, 4pm carries ’To good Fellowship’, and on the upper side of one of the hour lines (out of view), is ’David Harber, Henley on Thames, Oxon MMVI. There is also a plaque with the equation of time and an explanation of how to read the dial. It bears the following inscription: ’Commissioned by Prof. Martin Oldfield (Rolls Royce Engineering Fellow 1978 - 2006) and Mrs. Susan Oldfield.’ To see the dial you have to visit the college, which is open to visitors at certain times. It may be possible to glimpse it over the wall in Blackhall Road.