Sundial - St Mary's Church Tower, Church Road, North Creake, Norfolk, NR21 9JJ
Posted by: 
greysman
N 52° 54.298 E 000° 45.313
31U E 349031 N 5864058
An old and neglected sundial on the south face of the tower of this large parish church.
Waymark Code: WMV7DK
Location: Eastern England, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 03/08/2017
Views: 1
This large parish church is Grade I listed and in size more akin to inner city churches. It consists of a chancel, a south porch and south door, c.1300, and a nave, north aisle, and west tower, C15th, and is built of knapped and rubble flint with stone dressings and has lead roofs. There is a Brass in the church of a civilian holding a church as its donor. This is possibly Sir William Calthorpe who claimed in his will (1495) to have rebuilt the church, giving a possible date for the clerestorey and roofs. The church was restored in 1897 by Frederick Preedy, architect, at the bequest of Bishop Lloyd, Rector 1894-1903. Hicks and Charlewood of Newcastle on Tyne made the elaborate carved and painted altar and reredos, and the Decorated style oak carved rood screen.
The west tower is perhaps of 1503 with ashlar plinth and knapped flint to the west face only. Of four stages with off-set diagonal buttresses with ashlar quoins, to the four angles. A four panel C15th west door has tracery in the spandrel panels. The fine four-light west window has a tracery head and drip mould. The small two-light square head Perpendicular window on the west face used to be the light for the ringing chamber, thankfully this chamber has been moved down to a gallery nearer ground level but this results in a long draught for the bell ropes. The bell chamber has four three-light Perpendicular tracery windows, one on each face. The battlemented parapet has flushwork tracery and shields whilst the inscription on the east side is attributed to Ralph Blondeville,1503.
The sundial on the south face is a 'shadow' of its former self. Much neglected, most of the numerals have fallen off, only the '6'am, '3'pm and '4'pm are left, Above the very thin wire gnomon are two letters, 'R' and 'I'. There is no trace of any other lettering but the points where numbers used to be can be inferred from patches of mortar round the edge. It has been restored since it was erected as the numerals are 'modern' Arabic, not Roman, the shape of the 'six' places them mid C18th, and the gnomon is thin wire and has been fastened in place with mortar looking the same age as that holding the numerals. The face is approx. 1.5m circular with a roof drip-mould above, part of which has also gone. A repair has been made to the stonework of the tower impinging upon the dial at the 1pm position.