EARLY CHRISTIAN ART AND INSCRIPTIONS 



Chester was entirely rebuilt in 1822, but the sundial, which has been 

 preserved, is so exactly like the other two that we can have no hesitation 

 in assigning it to the Saxon period. 1 



The examples of Norman figure-sculpture in Hampshire are as 

 follows : 



Fonts Miscellaneous 



East Meon. Romsey Abbey (exterior rood). 



St. Mary Bourne. (capitals of columns). 



St. Michael's, Southampton. Oakley (slab). 



Winchester. St. Michael's, Southampton (slab). 



Porchester. Binstead, Isle of Wight (arch-stones). 



Tympana Whippingham, Isle of Wight (slab). 



Shalfleet, Isle of Wight. Winchester Cathedral (capital of 



column). 



The first four of the fonts given in the above list form a group by 

 themselves, on account of characteristics which they possess in common, 

 and because of their obvious connection with another similar group of 

 fonts in France and Belgium. They have not been inappropriately 

 termed fonts of the Winchester type, and their material, shape and 

 style of decoration are clear indications of a common origin. The black 

 marble of which they are all made is unknown in England but has been 

 traced to the quarries near Tournai in Belgium. The shape of the bowl 

 rectangular on the outside and round within, being supported on a large 

 central column with four smaller detached shafts at each of the angles. The 

 decoration consists chiefly of vine scrolls and scenes from the legendary 

 lives of saints, which are rare in the art of the twelfth century in Eng- 

 land but comparatively common in the sculpture in the north of France 

 and Belgium at the same period. 



Let us commence with the font in Winchester Cathedral which 



1 No Saxon sundials now existing have preserved the gnomon, but it is most likely that it projected 

 horizontally. In any case these sundials must have been very imperfect contrivances for the measure- 

 ment of time, as their makers were evidently entirely ignorant of the true principles on which their 

 setting out depends. Whatever the position of the face of the dial, the gnomon should be parallel to 

 the axis of the earth, and there is only one kind of sundial in which all the hour angles are equal, and 

 that is when the face of the dial is at right angles to the gnomon, and therefore parallel to the plane of 

 the equator. Such a dial is called an equatorial dial, and the size of the angles between the radial lines 

 for all other positions of the dial-face with regard to the gnomon can be found by a simple geometrical 

 construction, or what mathematicians call the process of ' projection.' Every one who is familiar with 

 the seventeenth and eighteenth century vertical sundials still to be seen on the south walls of our 

 churches will have observed that the hour angles are very large near the horizontal diameter, and get 

 gradually smaller and smaller towards the vertical diameter or the mid-day hour line. Now as the 

 Saxons made all the angles equal, it will be at once seen how extremely inexactly the time must have 

 been shown. There is a drawing of a sundial in a Saxon psalter in the British Museum (Tib. c. vi. 

 fol. 7) of the eleventh century, which shows all the hour angles made equal, and consequently that the 

 proper geometrical way of setting out the lines of a sundial was not known at that period. The 

 inefficiency of sundials thus designed is possibly one reason why such time-tellers are so rare between 

 the twelfth and the sixteenth century. After the invention of clocks, sundials became to a great extent 

 unnecessary, and the later sundials of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries may be looked upon 

 more as attempts to display the newly acquired knowledge of mathematics than as really useful appliances 

 for the measurement of time. 



Ample information on this subject is given in Father Haigh's papers on ' Yorkshire Dials ' in the 

 Yorkshire Archaok&cal "Journal (v. 1 34) and on The Saxon Cross at Bewcastle ' in the Artbitohgta 

 jEliana (n. s. i. 149), in both of which illustrations of the Hampshire sundials will be found. 



tl 241 31 



