Our Next Event is on Friday 1st November.
Autumn Talk
Friday 1st November 7.30 pm
Wells Museum Lecture Hall
Monuments and Effigies of Somerset
Our Autumn Talk is at Wells Museum Lecture Hall, 8 Cathedral Green, Wells BA5 2UE. Our speaker is Dr. Tim Connor, an architectural historian who focuses on buildings and church monuments in Dorset and Somerset, and is hugely respected in this field. His study of early chest tombs in West Dorset and South Somerset appeared in 2014.
Notes from William's Travels
The first in an occasional series
William Newsom one of our trustees is on a mission to visit every church in Somerset. He is reporting back when he comes across anything unusual. There is always something new to discover in churches and William's first unusual find are mass dials. Sometimes known as scratch dials, these date from the time before clocks, and were a means of knowing when the next mass was to be said. Effectively simple sundials, they are to be found scratched on the south facing wall of a church and are circular, usually about a foot wide, with a hole in the middle into which was fixed a wooden peg projecting out at right angles and various lines radiating out from the centre. As the sun traversed the sky the peg cast a shadow indicating the time at which services were held. Many churches in Somerset dating from the 15th century and earlier have them. The church of Holy Trinity, Newton St Loe has two alongside the south porch.
The church of St Bartholomew’s, Ubly has one in the north porch which is in the wrong place as it was moved from the south wall when a major restoration was carried out in the 19th century.
