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.
Repainted in Swan Hunter’s. Dial plate has been split apart and repaired. What must once have been an accurate equation of time curve has been fancifully restored without numbering. Beneath the dial plate originally appeared ’Lat 54º 58´ - Harum dum spectas cursum respice ad novissimam horam AD 1881’. C C Walker 1881 Lat 54.58 W R’. Watching these fleeting hours soon past remember that which comes at last (C C = Charles Denham Christie, W R = John Wigham Richardson).
Refs:
1 Mrs. A. Gatty.: The Book of Sundials, 4th ed. (1900), 269;
2. F. Evans: ’A Tyneside shipyard sundial.’ Bull. BSS 93.3 (1993) 24-25.
3. C. K. Aked: ’A Tyneside shipyard sundial.’ Bull. BSS 96.3 (1996) 29-31.
Originally made for Richardson’s yard and stood on a building once the time office, at the entrance. On the liquidation of Swan Hunter’s (formerly Swan, Hunter and Wigham Richardson) the dial was bought at auction by friends, including BSS members, of the Trinity Maritime Centre, Newcastle. On the closure of that museum it passed to the Discovery Museum where it is now in store.
Discovery Museum, Blandford Square, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 4JA, Northumberland
