Thanks for kind responses to my enquiry about bridge dials. It seems that the supposition that they are uncommon is true. David Brown has added another possible in the cubical dial on Maud Heath's causeway in Wiltshire (is this dial to be found somewhere in the BSS Register?). It seems the Ross on Wye dial is actually in Wilton (to Patrick Powers: no, I have no further information, Patrick). Mike Shaw's bridge with a dial in the Port Sunlight company town could be a Lever Co. reconstruction as it traverses a dry area. More, please, Mike. Sadly we had no time to travel from the Rhine up the Moselle on the BSS trip to Germany in 1997 to see the Bernkastel-Kues glass dial (thanks to John Carmichael for that one). But we saw the Llanrwst bridge dial on the 2001 BSS trip to North Wales.
Does a bridge which is itself a sundial count as a bridge sundial? Thierry van Steenberghe mentions the Sacramento River bridge at Redding, California.
Mario Arnaldi gives a clear statement of bridge dials from past centuries in Florence. Only the famous Ponte Vecchio dial seems to have survived. Clearly, from close to 1300 it must be one of the oldest modern dials in Europe.
Having come across the bridge dial in Berwick upon Tweed, England (just England, see below) by mere chance I think it might be worth consciously looking for others as they can be overlooked.
(Just England because from memory this border town has changed hands between the English and the Scots thirteen times in history.)
Frank 55N 1W -
