The Tyttenhanger Stained Glass Dial
Telling Time in Tyttenhanger… Well, no not really – we just like alliterative headlines! However this story does involve ‘time telling of old’ with the discovery of an hitherto unrecorded stained glass sundial from the seventeenth century. Christopher Daniel has long had a great interest in the stained glass dials of the British Isles and he and BSS Member Ian Butson found, in the 1910 edition of the The Royal Commission of Historical Monuments, Inventory of Historical Monuments in Hertfordshire, a mention of an otherwise unrecorded sundial at Tyttenhanger House, a house now sadly only used as commercial offices.
The
dial's
presence had been omitted from the 1950s English Heritage inventory for the
house – it being simply reported as ‘Heraldic Glass’. Even Pevsner failed to
note the dial in 1977.
Ian and Christopher each contacted the building’s owners for permission to view without success, but then Ian ‘Super Sleuth’ Butson discovered that despite the reluctance regarding visitors there was to be an Open Day organised by St Albans District Council on the last weekend of January 2010. It was the eighth so-called ‘Residents First’ opening, but open only to Council Tax payers of the District and then only via a voucher and timed tours.
Well, never underestimate the tentacles of BSS!! It was swiftly realised that Patrick Powers and his wife Catherine, were and still are, St Albans Council Tax payers and they were immediately 'detailed off' to attend the Open Day.
Let’s set aside the fact that it snowed that day, that an unnecessary trip had to be made to St Albans on market day (no less) to collect a later unneeded voucher and that what had been advertised as a 30 minute tour of the house eventually took over 90 minutes. Our team stayed the course eventually emerging with several photographs of an hitherto unrecorded, old but memorable stained glass sundial.
Yes, it is mounted in a frame as a sort of ‘suncatcher’ in front of a North facing window and it is also mounted back to front and ignominiously, is mounted over the leaded cames of the Chapel's window too! But it is a lovely, previously unknown, stained glass dial properly designed for the declination of the front façade and dating back to about 1675. It bears the motto Lumen Umbra Dei. (Light is the Shadow of God)
A rare discovery of a lovely dial brought about by cooperation between several BSS Members. That is exactly what the policy for Dial Recording is all about.
The dial measures 27.5h x 17.5w mm. It is without its gnomon and
has been retrieved from a different window of the house and placed inside a
larger leaded pane with other modern decorative features. This larger pane has
been placed on the inside of one of the present windows of the chapel although
this dial pane is firmly secured in front of the glass. The dial is mounted back
to front in this larger leaded pane (the photo here has been reversed) and the fact that it is mounted on the
inside of a normal window - right across joints in that window - makes it hard
to photograph or even to see some details from the pictures that one gets. The
glass of the actual dial has been 'repaired' in the rather crude manner of the
past, across the top left
and the bottom right corners.
Two gnomon securing holes are detectable, both currently filled in. They are at
the top and bottom in line with the Noon line.
Estimating that the Horizon line on the dial lies at 6:40pm, the dial therefore declines
about 13-14 degs West. The front facade of the House appears on Google Earth to
decline approx 13 degs W. This lends further credence to the suggestion that the
dial was made for the house in the 17th Century and used to reside in a front
facade window.
It
is interesting to compare the Tyttenhanger dial with that at Tredegar House
(Monmouthshire) which is dated 1672. Tredegar House is a 17th-century
Charles II-era country house mansion in Coedkernew, at the western edge of the
city of Newport, Wales. The building itself even has physical similarities to Tyttenhanger House.
Tredegar is owned by the National Trust and its dial is in a room panelled with
cedar where one pane of the window is marked with the lines and hours for a
sundial, radiating from a projecting gnomon, in similar colours and, above it, is
the same motto burnt in the glass in the very same script. The comparison
between the two dials is indeed remarkable; lending credence to the rough date
of the Tyttenhanger dial and suggesting that the maker may even be the same.
The importance of the Tyttenhanger Dial and, given its present rather strange fixing and location, together with the attendant risk of it never being properly recognised as 'important' by any future owner, has therefore been notified to the agents acting for any new owner. We hope that the new owner, especially if they might be a resident of the Estate will bring back the dial's prominence.
More about the Sale of the House:
Some relevant links are:
http://www.fineandcountry.com/international-template/property-for-sale/st-albans-coursers-road-tyttenhanger-park/al4-0pg/50039640
http://www.hertsad.co.uk/property/tyttenhanger_house_is_a_slice_of_st_albans_history_and_can_be_yours_for_12m_1_4435242
http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/tredegar-house
© Patrick Powers 2016