Heriot-Watt University (2), Edinburgh

This is a replica of a dial by Robert Palmer dated 1829 (SRN 8572). It was made by Graciela Ainsworth Sculpture Conservation Ltd, and it stands in the sunken garden at the university’s Riccarton campus. It shows hours III - XII - IV - IX, read from the inside, with a noon gap, and divided to 30, 15, 5 and individual minutes, with a fleur-de-lys at the half hours. At the centre is a 16-point compass rose, with the directions from SW to SE in the decorative outermost border. The compass rose is surrounded by the signs of the Zodiac, and next is a clockwise equation of time, and then a ring of thirty place-names (from Canton to Easter Isle) located according to their time of noon. The illustration at the south may loosely represent the Gibbon-Craig family crest with the motto ’VIVE DEO UT VIVAS’ (Live for God that you may live). Ref: Bulletin 36(iv) December 2024 pp23-25 Ref: Gatty, The Book of Sundials, 1900 Ref: MacGibbon & Ross, The Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland, 1892