Name: Sungod
Location: Parkhouse Sensory Garden
Installed: 1991
Artist: John Skelton
Information:
The sundial is called the Sungod and was designed by the British sculptor and lettercutter, John Skelton . Skelton worked and lived in Streat, near Hassocks and was awarded an MBE for his services to the Arts.
The gnomon (the part of a sundial that makes the shadow) is shaped like a face with one golden eye. Its shadow shows the time. You can see the time from where the shadow falls, and you can also feel it because the shadow makes the stone cooler to touch.
The numbers are carved into stone blocks around the base of the sculpture. A Latin motto is also carved there: Horas non numero nisi serenas, which means “I count not the hours unless they be happy“ (I only count the happy hours)
The blocks around the sundial show 15 hours, running clockwise from four o’clock in the morning (written as IIII) to eight o’clock in the evening (written as VIII). The Latin motto runs the opposite way, anticlockwise.
The motto
The motto and the garden inspired adult poem winner Maurice Packham in our Year of Culture 2019 poetry competition:
Horas non numero nisi serenas
Well, that would be a very simple thing to do
If, like Freud, you could discard the pain
Of memories sad, taking the optimistic view,
And only see the happier times again.
Be that as it may, we lived a pleasant hour
Among the lavenders and thyme and sage
And pretty things that late in Summer flower;
And for a time we forgot the weight of age
And talked of happier things and moments droll
Snatched from a past that cannot change,
For which even Nature cannot charge a toll,
Discussing things both rich and wondrous strange.
What earthly pleasure is there quite so sweet
As gentle friends conversing on a seat?
The need for Restoration
By 2020 the sundial was in need of restoration. Not only was the golden eye missing, but the top of the head had broken away, leaving two jagged metal pins and the lettering on the stones had faded.
In October 2020 the Friends met with John Skelton’s daughter, Helen Mary Skelton to discuss how the sculpture might be restored.
Helen Mary was trained by her father and after completing a three-year apprenticeship with him in 1976. She worked alongside her father in his workshops at Streat.
Helen Mary suggested that she would refresh the lettering by cleaning and repainting. Her colleague, sculptor Alyosha Moeran, would reshape the gnomon.
We applied to RSA, who had been so generous when the garden was created and were thrilled that not only did RSA agree to provide the money for the restoration but topped this up to a grant of £5,000. This got us thinking more widely about restoring Park House Garden and kick-started our ‘Sense the Change’ project.