The Butterton church sundial has a new brass gnomon on the old dial plate. After many years outdoors the brass plate has turned green in colour. The Gothic script on the back of the plate shows it came from the Pursglove memorial in Tideswell church.
A few years ago we restored the sundial at St Bartholomew’s Church in the lovely Staffordshire village of Butterton. We found that the brass dial plate had ancient engraving in Gothic script on the underside, which was a mystery. The writing looked like part of a memorial brass, and we now know it came from Tideswell church in Derbyshire.
Tideswell was the birthplace of Bishop Pursglove. His name lives on in the village school, which he originally founded in 1560 some years before his death in 1579. On the wall in Tideswell’s beautiful church is a memorial brass in his name. The Gothic script at Butterton matches the text on this memorial, except that the sundial brass is much smaller so it only shows some of the words. Clearly, the sundial brass is a piece from Tideswell.
According to records, the memorial on the church wall is a palimpsest, in other words an old piece of brass re-used and re-engraved. Apparently, the original Pursglove brass needed to be replaced because of wear and damage and around 1680 it was cut into sections. One of the sections became the memorial on the wall. The Butterton brass must be another piece that was still available much later for making the sundial. Maybe this was at the time of building the new Church of St Bartholomew in 1871.