![](https://gaudiumsubsole.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/st-mary-potterne-wilts-benefice-cc.jpg?w=1024)
ST MARY . POTTERNE . WILTS
GRADE I ❖ Saxon origins; built C13; C15 work to tower; restorations 1870s. A remarkably uniform E.E. design HE; An E.E. church of exceptional purity and classicity PEV. Features of interest include an Anglo-Saxon tub font with rim inscribed in Latin; a C14 font; fine woodwork; C17(?) Royal Arms of puzzling design. Good graffiti on pillars. Outside, there is an unusual Dole Stone; and the scratch dial featured here. 2m S of Devizes. 51.326 / -2.0079 / ST995585
DIAL
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The dial is located on a quoin stone of the buttress at W end of S side. The gnomon hole is centred quite accurately, and surrounded by a ring of small pocks of roughly equal size. The spacing is uneven. 12 of them are drilled in the lower half, in a semicircle that includes the horizontal ‘6-to-6’ line. The other 7 are above the horizontal in the night zone. The pock at notional midnight has 3 on either side, forming an almost symmetrical design. These can only be for decorative purposes, being of no use in marking the passage of the day / night.
As for radial lines, despite erosion 5 lines are visible – 3 LLQ, a faint noon line, the horizontal line RHS. Each terminates with a pock. There remain hints of 2 or 3 others.
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❖
GRAFFITI . FONT WITH LATIN INSCRIPTION . COMPASS-DRAWN PROTECTION MARKS
The VV in the first image, assuming it is an initial, is in the distinctive form of a Marian mark, a commonly found protection symbol standing for the ‘Virgin of Virgins’.
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GSS Category: Scratch Dial; Mass Dial
All photos Keith Salvesen; header drawing from the Benefice site