Frank Evans wrote:
He [Keith Scobie-Youngs] unfortunately had no information or theory on
what the "PL Long" [Now known to be PI Long] meant, nor indeed as to
why the dial is canted to no apparently significant declination!
On the matter of the dial being designed as a declining dial yet also
being canted out, it may be of interest that there are only 16 dials
known to the BSS Register which have this property. Some six of these
are in Gloucestershire and oddly four of those are in the little village
of Chipping Campden alone! Only one such dial (the Hawkshead dial) is
known in Cumbria.
Sometimes (as in Woodstock, Oxfordshire on the Town Hall) the dial is a
direct copy of a properly deliniated dial nearby which has then been
turned to show correct solar time at its location.. Others might have
been deliniated from one set of calculations - perhaps prepared for an
earlier nearby client and then adjusted to suit on site. We think the
Chipping Campden dials may be examples of this. Another possibility is
simply that the determination of the wall's declination may have been
approximate and that canting is then the best way to adjust the dial to
show correct time.
The Hawkshead dial markings indicate that all measurements were taken
with considerable precision so such a large degree of cant is odd. We do
not even currently know if the canting is necessary or not The BSS
Register entry alludes to the fact that the dial may have been canted in
order better to reflect the old school hours of the day. In August of
1998 our recorder Bob Sylvester wrote an addendum to his first sighting
of the dial (in 1990). He wrote:
"The delination of the dial is a puzzle as it seems unnecessary to skew
the dial at such an angle. It does however catch the hours from 5am to
teatime and these fit in better with the old school hours when scholars
had to be at their desks at 6am. There is some evidence that the
scholars had a part in the construction of this dial. In times past,
part of a boy's mathematical training included astronomy and dialling.
Hawkeshead Grammar School had a reputation for mathematics and astronomy
and produced several pupils, such as William Pearson, who achieved
greatness in later life as an astronomer. Although not on general
display, the curator has available examples of the scholars' work from
1829 in calculating the position of the moon".
I suspect that we need a proper measurement of the orientation of the
School House wall to see whether there is a need for canting out or not.
Whilst it is not unusual for a dial to have on it the Longitude of its
actual location, it is unusual for there to be indicated a Longitude
which bears no relation to Longitudes in England. This dial was erected
some thirty years before the standardisation of Longitude to the
Greenwich meridian and in those days explorers would commonly reset
longitudes whenever they arrived a new place; so this departure from
using a local longitude is doubly surprising.
However what is not at all unusual on English dials is the indication of
the times (usually of Noon) at places around the world particularly
those places of the emerging British Empire or those where the dial
owners had relatives or other interests. Given the school's known
interest in such matters it might be that the reference to a longitude
is connected with that.
In his earliest report of the dial (that of 1990) Bob Sylvester reported
that
"The dial is headed by coordinates. Two gold suns surmount the working
area. The numerals were done in gold but not a lot of this remains.
There is evidence of further writing on the dial but markings are
indistinct."
So, at this stage the dial markings were hard to read. The curator had
to assist in their deipherment prior to the recent restoration.
This dial must have been repainted more than once in its life and I
suspect that as well as trying to solve the problem of the "PI
Longitude" on the basis that it is a correct inscription, we should also
consider the possiblility that there has been restoration drift over the
years and that what we read now may not have been what was there
originally.
If readers of this list are prepared to move now into the realm of
fantasy (!) and it is just that, might the 'I' of the 'PI' originally
have been an 'E' and the numeral '3' of the degrees of longitude
originaly been a '2'? If so then "PE Long 25 43 40" refers very closely
to Port Elizabeth on the East coast of South Africa. A British
settlement founded in 1820, only 25 years before the dial was made, and
one which figures quite frequently on English dials that mark the time
at 'other places'. Moreover, as one can read in any history of the Cape
Settlement (eg see Wikipedia) the town has always been commonly referred
to as PE..
Maybe the design and the strange canting of the dial is connected with
that.- or something like that. Clearly we need Bob Sylvester to make
another visit and measure the declination of the museum wall. (Not
altogether an easy thing to plan and do given that Hawkshead is close to
the place in the UK with the highest rainfall!!)
Patrick
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