Kirkdale Sundial
A unique treasure whose secrets
reveal an extraordinary insight into the world of the eleventh century upon which
you can stare today, imagining our ancestors who did the same a thousand years
ago
Visiting
Kirkdale
About a mile
west of Kirkbymoorside, south of the North York Moors, you will find a treasure
of the history of our family ancestors and of Ryedale. Head towards Helmsley on
the A170 and at the Welburn junction head north on Kirkdale Lane. Turn right at
the crossroads and you can park in a large carpark beside the minster.
Walk up to
the church and through the metal gate to the porch at the west door which is
now the main entrance to the church. Look up and you will find a Yorkshire
treasure, which will transport you back a thousand years to the decade
immediately before the Norman Conquest in 1066.
The
Sundial
Above the
south doorway within the porch, you will see a sundial from the
Anglo-Saxon-Scandinavian period, which bears the following inscription:
“Orm the
son of Gamal acquired St Gregory’s Minster when it was completely ruined and
collapsed, and he had it built anew from the ground to Christ and to St Gregory
in the days of King Edward and in the days of Earl Tostig”.
The sundial
itself bears the inscription “This is the day’s sun circle at each hour”
and then “The priest and Hawarth me wrought and
Brand”.
As you look
at the sundial, you might glimpse, from the corner of your eye, the shadowy
figure of a direct ancestor who shares the genes we have inherited, also
looking at the same inscription. Give some thought to how that ghostly spirit
might have interpreted the sundial, and what significance might once have been
drawn from it.
The
inscription refers to Edward the Confessor and to Tostig, the son of Earl
Godwin of Wessex and brother of Harold II, the last Anglo Saxon King of
England. Tostig was the Earl of Northumbria between 1055 and 1065. It was
therefore during that last relatively peaceful decade, immediately before the
Norman conquest, that Orm, son of Gamal rebuilt St Gregory’s Church.
The sundial
consists of a stone slab nearly eight feet long (236 cm) by about twenty inches
wide (51 cm), divided into three panels. The central panel contains the dial,
and the Old English inscription above it may be translated as "This is
the day's sun-marker at every hour."
The panels
to left and right contain the further inscription in Old English which
furnishes precious information about the early history of the church.
The
left-hand panel provides the first half of the main inscription: "Orm
the son of Gamal acquired St. Gregory's Minster when it was completely ruined.”
The
right-hand panel completes the information: “and collapsed, and he had it
built anew from the ground to Christ and to St. Gregory, in the days of king
Edward and in the days of earl Tosti."
At the foot
of the central panel a further inscription reads: "Hawarth
made me: and Brand (was) the priest."
Tostig, the
son of Earl Godwin of Wessex and the brother of Harold II the last Anglo-Saxon
king of England, was earl of Northumbria from 1055 to 1065. It was therefore
during that decade that Orm the son
of Gamal rebuilt St. Gregory's church. It is very rarely that we can date the
construction of an early medieval church so precisely.
The sundial
was preserved in a coat of plaster until it was discovered in 1771.
The sundial
was placed over the south doorway, There can be no certainty that the sundial
was built into the new church as it was constructed, but the general dating of
the fabric suggests this was so. It was probably built into the new church at
the time of the rebuilding in about 1055. At that time the main entrance to the
church was the west doorway so another possibility is that it was originally
housed there.
“We cannot be sure that its present position is its
original position … The sundial could even have originally been separate from
the church structure itself; but there is a strong probability, given the
dedicatory nature of the associated inscription … that it always comprised a
prominent display on the face of Orm’s rebuilt church – on the south side of
the building, that is, in order the catch the sun.” (S A J Bradley MA FSA,
Professor Emeritus, University of York).
It is not unlike the seventh century inscription of St
Paul’s Church, Jarrow, which reads In hoc singulari
signo vita redditur mundo, “In this singular symbol, life is restored to
the world”.
The characters of the inscriptions are mostly in the
Latin alphabet. They are in Old English, apart from the conventional Latinate
forms of sanctus (which is abbreviated to
SCS), Christus (christe, abbreviated to
XPE), and Gregorius. Otherwise the wording is of late Old English.
The inscription introduces us to a number of
individuals. Orm is Orm Gamalson,
but his name is not written in its Norse form of Ormr,
but in anglicised form. Tosti is Earl Tostig of Northumbria. Eardward refers to Edward the Confessor. It is likely that Hawarth was the sculptor who undertook the work. Brand was
the priest, perhaps custodian of the science of the computus
which may have lain behind the conception of the sundial.
It happens
that there was a Provost Brand, who was elected abbot of Peterborough in 1066.
Perhaps the Kirkdale Priest moved south in the following decade, at the time of
the Conquest.
Kirkdale is
now recognised to have been at the forefront of contemporary English
architecture, with comparisons to St Mary’s Deerhurst and even to Westminster
Abbey, the masterpiece of Edward the Confessor. There may have been
influence from Ealdred Archbishop of York from 1061 to 1069, who had also been
bishop of Worcester and who later crowned William the Conqueror at Westminster
on Christmas Day 1066. Orm Gamalson
held property in York, and may well have been subject to Ealdred’s ideas. It
might have been Ealdred who influenced Orm Gamalson to commission the
inscription. Ealdred was a diplomat, almost a ‘prince bishop’.
The stone
for the rebuilding was from local sources and reused material. If the stone
came from the quarry of North Grimston near Wharram Percy, 27km south east of
Kirkdale, this might have been an asset of Orm Gamal’s family.
Symbolism
had continued in its importance from the Anglo Saxon into the late Scandinavian
period. The sundial itself is a relic of sophisticated allusion, with symbolic
and liturgical meaning. It provides a continuity of experience to the period
when Ryedale was a part of the empire of Rome and Romanitas,
the treasuring of Roman concepts, was important.
The sundial
provides an extraordinary wealth of information conveying Scandinavian, Latin
and English associations. It links to an antique past, Roman, Anglo Saxon and
then Scandinavian.
It is the
first known reference to the dedication of the church to St Gregory, but the
inference is that the church was already dedicated to Gregory. The inscription
reaffirms the importance of Kirkdale’s connections
with Rome.
Earl Tostig,
referred to in the inscription, with Archbishop Ealdred of York, had been on a
pilgrimage to Rome in 1061.
The
inscription is the first surviving reference to the church being a minster, but
it is likely that the church was founded as a minster, though the meaning and
connotations of that definition was likely to have changed over time.
A Short
History of Time
An
interpretation by Professor Bradley of the sundial and its inscription: “This
is the day’s sun circle at each hour”, takes us into the imaginations and
perceptions of our ancestors who conceived of the sundial and looked up at it
as they regularly walked through the door.
Whilst
sundials were already old in England by the mid eleventh century, the Kirkdale
community’s gadgetry for the purpose of telling the time was not particularly
sophisticated. The folk of Kirkdale would have been as well off using such
things as the shadow of hill tops or other features of the landscape as natural
shadow clocks. Professor Bradley therefore suggests that it is highly likely
that the folk of Kirkdale would have used natural features for time telling and
its steep sided valley would have offered good opportunities for such methods.
This might be more consistent with such records as the Prologue to Chaucer’s Canterbury
Tales, in which the narrator was able to calculate that it was foure of the clokke
by a calculation based on his own shadow.
It therefore
seems more likely, particularly given its position over the doorway into the
minster, that the real purpose of the sundial was not practical and secular,
but religious and profound. Indeed the practice was to bury the dead who had
been faithful on the south side of the church, so the exterior of the south
wall was a logical place for such symbolism.
The sundial
has eight divisions. This matches the division of the 24 hour day into eight
sections in the New Testament, with daylight divided into four periods each
corresponding to three hours starting at 6am.
It has therefore
been proposed that the sundial was intended to be a symbolic reminder of
temporal progression or pilgrimage. Time was perceived as the linear temporal
space within which the world moved towards its final judgement and dissolution.
By the
fourth century CE, Christian theology had focused on God’s plans for how life
on earth was lived. This brought with it a conception of history and the
passage of time.
Orm’s
octaval sundial might have been a reminder to those who passed underneath it,
to keep watch of the day and night against Christ’s Second Coming. It might
also have been an incentive to live life as a pilgrimage through time.
The
contemporaneous belief was that people were in temporary exile in the world
from a heavenly home. A symbolic reminder to follow a life of pilgrimage
therefore had a place. This was a subject that later ran through English
literature, such as John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. The Seafarer
written in about 1000 CE described the seafarer who, despites the dangers, was
irresistibly drawn to journey onwards over the oceans.
The Kirkdale
sundial might have originally been painted in vibrant colours. It might have
been intended for those who set eyes upon it, to think upon Time. Consciousness
of time was growing through awareness of history. Bede was the national
historian of the English people and Alfred of Wessex had instilled in the
English people an understanding of the need for civilised people to keep
historical records.
The
rebuilding of Kirkdale represents a striking investment of wealth by Orm, which
reflects a revision of the English church of the late tenth and eleventh
centuries. It seems likely that the Scandinavian named Orm Gamalson was
inspired by an awareness of history.
This was an
uneasy generation of the period just after the end of the first millennium. In
1014, Wulfstan, Archbishop of York, had published his sermon addressed to the
English nation. He anticipated the coming of the Antichrist and found moral
decline in the nation. There was always some uncertainty about the exact span
of the thousand years. What was in doubt was the precise date, but not of the
fact of a Second Coming. So it is possible that Orm’s sundial created not so
long after the turn of the millennium, was recording the passing of the last of
days. If that is so, it is difficult to tell whether it was created with a
sense of foreboding, or whether it was a more optimistic symbol.
There was
also an idea that the sun in its daily course was appointed to declare mystical
truths of God’s creation. The sun and moon were understood to mirror God’s
purposes and the destiny of humankind. Perhaps the sundial on the south wall of
the church might have aspired its onlookers to gain some knowledge from the
passage of light as it charted the shadow of a perceived continuum. Orm’s
ornate sundial might have been intended to offer a glimpse into the divine
order of things.
Orm’s
sundial was also likely to have reflected the main thrust of ‘scientific’
consideration, focused on the searching for a knowledge of the Creator and his
universe, and his purposes, through the interpretation of the calendar. This
comprised the calculations of the computes, which had caused such division
within the church until a resolution was reached at the Synod of Whitby in 664 CE.
In 325 CE
the Council of Nicaea ruled that Christians should hold Easter on the same day,
always a Sunday. Its calculation was linked to the Jewish method to determine
the date of the Passover. The computational method involved complex cycles of
years. It never worked well. Bede’s De
temporum ratione was an attempt to help
calculate the dates of Easter up to the millennium and beyond.
There was a
renewal of computus learning in the late tenth
and early eleventh centuries. Aelfric’s
De temporibus anni was a development of
Bede’s earlier work.
With
guidance from texts such as Bede’s and Aelfric’s, it had become possible for a
reasonably educated cleric to make his own calculations. There was likely to
have been a network of ecclesiastical connections, leading to the restored
library at York. Kirkdale’s
likely associations with York would probably have given access to Kirkdale’s priest, Brand, to these works.
So Brand may
have been a priest who, with Orm’s patronage, was able to articulate complex
ideas of the passage of time, reinforcing the correct calculation of time
through computus science, with a primarily
theological symbolism, inspiring our ancestors to use their time wisely and
piously, particularly against the perceived threat of an ending of time.
After the
Conquest in 1074, when Orm had lost his lands, but not so long after the
rebuilding of Kirkdale, the Monastery of St Paul at Jarrow was re-established
in the 1070s by Aldwin, the Benedictine prior of Winchcombe in Gloucestershire,
inspired by reading Bede’s Ecclesiastical History to visit the holy
places of Northumbria. He had been inspired to see whether the Bedean centres
of monastic life were still thriving as recorders of history. Perhaps on his
journey from York he might have found
Kirkdale. If so, Kirkdale might have reassured Aldwin of a local understanding
of theological direction.
So when you
look at the sundial today, it is worth reflecting on what it might have meant
to a person who might be a direct but distant relative. If he or she was
contemplating time, the sundial might now be a portal across a thousand years,
to provide some linkage to our ancestral past.
or
Go Straight to Chapter 3 –
Scandinavian Kirkdale
Go Straight to the History of
Anglo-Saxon-Scandinavian Kirkdale
If your interest is in Kirkdale then I suggest you visit the
following pages of the website.
· The community in Anglo Saxon Times
· The church in Anglo Saxon Times
· The Kirkdale
Anglo Saxon artefacts
· The community in Anglo Saxon Times
· The church in Anglo Saxon
Scandinavian Times
You will find a chronology, together
with source material at the Kirkdale Page.