What is a scratch dial?

Answer 1

I can speak about a scratch dial first hand as we have one on our parish church. Scratch dials were in regular use before clocks and especially watches were generally available to tell the time. Before mechanical timepieces the only reliable way (and that was not that reliable!) was by using the sun's position in the sky, and hence a sundial. A scratch dial is made of a small hole in the wall of a church (around 3/4 inch in diameter and an inch deep) surrounded by lines radiating from it at particular angles like the spokes in a wheel. The lines represent the times, on a Sunday, of the various services and were spaced out accordingly when the dial was made. To use a scratch dial, a finger is inserted into the hole perpendicular to the wall, and the edge of the sun's shadow of the finger is examined against the lines scratched into the stone, so that a visitor can see how long it will be before the next service.