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MUCHELNEY ABBEY . SOMERSET
GRADE I ✠ C7 origins with a long and fascinating history amply covered by many sources. The Wiki entry gives a good brief account. Now only the Abbot’s House and the Lavatorium remain intact. The ruined foundations are all that can be seen of the Abbey buildings and layout.
The Abbot’s House has a number of apotropaic marks including hexfoils and taper burns, noted on the relevant pages here.
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DIAL
We visited the Abbey knowing approximately what to expect from the Abbot’s House. It is well worth exploring, and there are helpful EH volunteers on hand to give information.
We eventually reached the West Kitchen, which has a door to the S side of the building. It was a great surprise to find a simple and eroded scratch dial between the doorway and the East Kitchen window. It is quite rare to find a scratch dial on a building other than a church. Non-secular dials can occasionally be found on medieval barns. Perhaps the Abbot’s dial was originally part of the original abbey building, and re-sited. I’d prefer to think that a factotum had cut the dial specially for an Abbott so that he could keep track of the important times of the monastic day for which he was responsible.
This is not an easy dial to analyse. Certainly there is a horizontal line ( 6-to-6) that runs through the gnomon hole (very faint RHS). There is a deeper cut noon line that seems to extend above the hole to the mortar line.
As often, a b&w image can assist with finer details. There is a faint 9-line, suggesting that Terce was the primary time for observance. Possibly a further line at 11? No relevant markings LRQ. Possibly there is a line ULQ just above the horizontal.
It is clear that EH and the guides know about the dial, but I have been unable to find a reference to it elsewhere. Probably a local research group will have recorded it, but otherwise it seems that this unusual dial (for location) is very little known
MUCHELNEY ABBEY . SOUTH FRONT
GSS Category: Scratch Dial; Mass Dial
All photos: Keith Salvesen
GAUDIUM SUB SOLE . SUNDIALS . MEDIEVAL TO MODERN 