Memorial: Golden Jubilee sundial
Erection date: /10/2002
{On the brass plaque at the centre:}
This dial is set to Greenwich mean time.
{followed by various dates, e.g. "21 June", on either side of a central line}
Stand on the line nearest today's date.
[Just outside the central bronze plaque:}
Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee 2002
{Around the outer ring, from Shakespeare's Henry VI Part III.:}
To carve out dials quaintly, point by point, thereby to see the minutes how they run: how many makes the hour full complete, how many hours brings about the day, how many days will finish up the year, how many years a mortal man may live.
This is an analemmatic sundial. A gnomon that moves according to the date makes the time-telling more accurate. In this case the gnomon is the user's head.
Site: Golden Jubilee sundial (1 memorial)
SW1, St Margaret Street, Old Palace Yard
This sundial was commissioned by Parliament and installed as part of the overhaul of Old Palace Yard. The yard was paved in granite and its outline defined by gas lanterns. The Google satellite view shows how Whitehall cuts diagonally across the yard which is part of the Palace of Westminster.
Old Palace Yard was once the go-to place for executions: Sir Walter Raleigh, Guy Fawkes and 3 of his fellow-conspirators, and James Hamilton (1606 -1649). But we have found no commemorative plaque.
