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Christopher Daniel

CHRISTOPHER DANIEL has been the regular author of 'The Sundial Page' for the last twenty years, since 1988, when he took over from Noel Ta’Bois. His first contribution to the magazine had been an in-depth article on stained-glass sundials, in the April 1987 issue, with a checklist of such dials that were still extant in the British Isles. In later issues, he also wrote in-depth articles on the sundials of Malta and those great horizontal sundials in Portugal, used to regulate the flow of water in the vineyards.

Christopher St John Hume Daniel was born on 13th November 1933 in ‘Maybourne’, his maternal grandfather’s house, in Sydenham, in the London Borough of Bromley in Kent, 'over the tunnel' of the Southern Railways electric line. This was part of the electrified system for which his grandfather, a civil engineer, had been responsible some years earlier. Indeed, it was understood that his grandmother had 'driven' the first electric train for a few yards out of Lewisham station!

Before the Second World War, the family had bought a house in Esher, where Christopher and his elder brother Timothy went to ‘kindergarten’; but, in 1939, when she was only thirty nine, their mother died of endocarditis, having earlier suffered from rheumatic fever, and the brothers experienced a difficult period when they were obliged to stay with different aunts and uncles, scattered around the country. However, their father remarried and rented a property, ‘The Craigan’, in Ifield, in Sussex, which became their home for most of the war. At the age of seven years, Christopher joined his brother at Tre-Arddur House, a preparatory school on the rocky coast of Holy Island in Anglesey, North Wales, run by his step mother’s brother-in-law, who was the headmaster. Here he had seven happy years of school life, by the sea, and the excitement of the eight-hour steam train journey south, the 6.55 am, from Holyhead to Euston for the holidays in Sussex.

In 1947, Christopher went to public school at Pangbourne Nautical College, near Reading in Berkshire, where he enjoyed the naval discipline, acquired an interest in submarines, particularly German U-boats, and reluctantly learned the rudiments of navigation – a subject which, just a few years later, was to become close to his heart. However, at the time, he preferred the study of the humanities, contributed ‘poems’ to the N.C.P. College Log, for which he was awarded a book prize for the ‘Best “Log” Contribution’ in July 1950. In his eighteenth year, he went to sea, as a cadet in the Clan Line, and a year later he was awarded another poetry prize for merit, in the Seafarers’ Education Service Poetry Competition in 1952. The prize was a 15s.book of poetry, which he had been given for a fourteen-line sonnet with a title line, giving his work a value of 1s.a line – a rewarding figure at a time when he was earning just £7-10s-0d (£7.50) per month or £90 gross a year!

In 1955, after taking his initial professional examinations, Christopher joined the great passenger line, which had long attracted him, the P. & O. Steam Navigation Company with the rank of 4th Officer, and, at about the same time, he also joined the Royal Naval Reserve, with the rank of ‘Probationary Acting’ Sub-Lieutenant. In this capacity he sailed the world in various different ships, including cargo ships and passenger ships – mainly on the Australian run, but also to the Far East – and in warships, including coastal minesweepers and frigates. During this time, his home was at Brenchley, in the beautiful countryside of Kent, but he enjoyed his life at sea and developed his interest in navigation, even ‘inventing’ a tropical revolving storm protractor, for plotting the estimated course of these dangerous meteorological phenomena. In 1959 he was married, settling in Trinity Church Square in London, and in due course he had two daughters, Shirena born in 1963 and Andrea born in 1965. In 1962 he had taken his final professional examinations and qualified as a Master Mariner.

After his thirteen year career at sea, Christopher Daniel joined the staff of the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich in 1964, in the Department of Navigation & Astronomy. From 1967 onwards, his early curatorial responsibilities encouraged him to make a particular study of sundials and dialling literature. In 1972 he undertook his first ‘sundial’ design, which was the armillary symbol of the newly established Nautical Institute, which was to set him on course for a later third career in sundial design. Also, in this same year, he published his first small contribution to dialling literature: Sundials – The Common Vertical in N.W. Kent, (1972).

Granted sabbatical leave by the Museum, he returned again to the sea briefly, joining the reproduction of Francis Drake’s famous ship, the Golden Hinde, as second-in-command, (1973-1975). During the course of the voyage from Plymouth to San Francisco, he used copies of period Tudor navigation instruments, carrying out a programme of observations in the Atlantic and on passage up the Pacific seaboard to San Francisco. In 1976, following his return to the National Maritime Museum, he was given responsibility for Education Services and in 1979 he became Head of the Department of Museum Services. In 1977, Christopher had designed the now well known ‘dolphin’ equinoctial mean-time sundial at Greenwich, celebrating the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, and, in 1979, this was followed by a sculptured vertical sundial for the new premises of the Marine Society and the Nautical Institute at Lambeth. In 1980, he delineated the horizontal sundial which was presented by the VC & GC Association to HM The Queen Mother, to celebrate her 80th birthday, set up in the Doll’s House garden of the Royal Lodge at Windsor.

In 1986, after twenty-two years, he took early retirement from the Museum, pursuing his third career as a sundial designer, author and lecturer. Also, in 1986, his most lasting and evidently popular contribution to dialling literature was published, which was his Shire album Sundials. In 2004, Shire Publications upgraded this little album to a more substantial book in full colour. Since it was originally published, twenty-two years ago, this Shire work, described as the best introduction to the subject, has sold some 26,500 copies, which must surely be a record in such a limited field. However, within two years, in 1989, he joined with three others to form the British Sundial Society, which now has a five hundred strong membership, which has established itself with an enviable reputation across the world. Christopher Daniel designed the Society’s ‘equinoctial’ sundial symbol and has been the chairman of the organisation, following the death of Dr Andrew Somerville, since 1990.

Other than the sundial designs already mentioned, Christopher’s most notable works include the fours sundials on St Margaret’s, Westminster; the reconstructed ‘17th century’ vertical sundial in HM Tower of London; the vertical declining mean-time noon-mark sundial at Green College, Oxford, celebrating the bicentenary of the Radcliffe Observatory; the ‘Nelson’ vertical declining sundial at Chatham, which ‘tracks’ the Battle of Trafalgar on 21st October, indicating the time of Nelson’s death; the Sir Francis Drake commemorative stained-glass sundial in Buckland Abbey, in Devon; the 17th century-style stained-glass sundial in the Merchant Adventurers’ Hall in York; the equinoctial stainless steel armillary sundial, marking the centenary of the Savoy; and many others. He served as Deputy Master of the Honourable Company of Master Mariners for the year 1989/90, during the period when HRH the Prince of Wales was titular Master, and designed the Company’s commemorative ‘human’ analemmatic sundial for the National Memorial Arboretum at Alrewas, in Staffordshire. It must be said that he has probably written more about sundials than anyone else has done, bearing in mind that he has produced more than 240 articles for Clocks alone, not to mention all his other publication!

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