Lennoxlove Castle, East Lothian- NT 515721 - Gatty 160, Ross 468, Stev 255/6
The dial is in the sunken garden attached to the castle. It is originally from North Barr House, Renfrewshire and is thought to have been carved by James Gifford of West Linton. The sunken garden was created in 1912 by the architect Sir Robert Lorimer. He was also the architect for the Hill of Tarvit and Earlshall. He knew the place of the dial in relation to Scottish renaissance castles and so would often re-use dials from elsewhere or carve new dials in the old style.
It is an extraordinary piece of sculpture with a lady in C17 dress clutching a thistle to her bosom acting as the plinth. She carefully balances on her head the octagonal facet dial with 17 faces including a horizontal dial on top. Her stone neck would have been structurally too weak to carry the load so the stone carver cleverly gave her a hair cut that is structural as well as elegant.
The initials on the dial are DMG for Donald MacGilchrist and the date is 1679.
Visited 24 May 1981 - A. R. Somerville
Visited 2003 - Author
I had thought this would be a bit of an epic expedition and so it turned out to be though not for the reasons I imagined. This was largely through me catching a local bus from Edinburgh rather than the fast coach which meant that the journey took over two hours to get to Haddington rather than the half an hour it could have.
Haddington was lovely. I spent a good time having a look around and stumbled on St Mary's Church which had extremely enthusiastic guides to the point where I it's hard to escape their attentions.
However, trying to ignore Haddington's delights I pressed on to walk to Lennoxlove castle which is a fairly pleasant walk through the countryside. I got to the castle to find it closed for the day. Luckily the dial that i had sought for so long was tucked safely in the walled garden so in I went. The weather wasn't colluding with me and at this point became cloudy. I simply sat down and waited for an odd beam of sunlight to touch the dial. My wait was not in vain. At this point my trusty SLR which I had mistreated and abused for at least 15 years or so died. Hence no photographs.
However, a lovely couple of walkers then came by who also hadn't known that the castle was closed. They took great interest in my interest in the dial which led to a lovely conversation of a good few hours and a commission to build them a dial. Sadly I didn't as I lacked the tools etc. but it was a very interesting offer.
Then back to Haddington for a very long search for a lost mysterious dial. But more of that another time..........