All Saints’ Church, Odiham

A pair of ’scientific’ scratch dials on a buttress on the south side of the church. The buttress, built in the 16th or 17th century, declines around 20 degrees east of south. Both dials have deeply incised hour lines with aligned Roman numerals. Unlike earlier scratch dials which have a horizontal gnomon and, typically, equally spaced hour lines, these appear to have hour lines spaced to work (much more accurately) with a polar gnomon. The upper dial has hour lines from 1 to 4pm clearly visible to the right of the gnomon. 12 noon should be vertical but isn’t apparent. To the left, four morning hour lines are visible. The higher three appear to be numbered VI, VII and VIII with the letter V read from the right and the letters ’I’ placed to read ’VI’, ’IIV’ and ’IIIV’. It is difficult to reconcile the angles of these lines with modern hours. See SRN which has similar Roman numerals. The lower dial has similar hour lines 1pm to 4pm, but has another line between the vertical and the 1 o’clock line, perhaps labelled with a very large ’X’. To the left, it has lines approximately parallel to those on the higher dial and, similarly, labelled VI, VII and VIII. There are a further one or two lines between these and the vertical, giving the appearance that the noon line is the only labelled with a large ’X’ which is not vertical. The upper dial has a modern ad hoc gnomon wrongly aligned and, most unfortunately, screwed so as to obscure and, probably, damage the gnomon hole. The lower dial has no gnomon but an evident hole for one. A further hole has no obvious purpose.