What is recorded here

Donaghpatrick holds a trapezoidal scratch dial set into its SW graveyard wall, marking time with radial lines and a central gnomon hole. The device follows an English pattern from 1200 to 1500, yet it stands in County Meath, where local people may have read sunlight across burial ground instead of church steps. That displacement suggests a lost workshop, a travelling mason or a borrowed custom carried into Irish soil. The dial still turns daylight into sequence, while the names and intentions behind its placement have faded into silence.

The trapezoidal head (H 0.47m; Wth 0.37-0.68m) of a sundial with a circle (ext. diam. 0.31m) incised by double lines, radial lines and a central hole for the gnomon is built into the outer face of the SW wall of the subrectangular graveyard (ME017-034001-) at Donaghpatrick towards the S corner. This is of a type known as a scratch dial, common in England from the period 1200 to 1500, when they would have been installed on the S walls of churches (Ryan 2006). See the attached image. Compiled by: Michael Moore Date of revised upload; 15 April, 2019

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