Sundial sale brightens owner's day

A RARE sundial thought to have been made in the Capital has been sold for £16,250.

The stone polyhedral dial had been expected to sell for between 7000 and 10,000 at the auction at Christie's South Kensington, London yesterday.

The artefact had been discovered half-buried in the ground at Walton Lodge, in Great Amwell, Hertfordshire, in 1974 and had been used for growing strawberries.

It was only recently that experts realised it was a rare Scottish Renaissance sundial. When they looked at it more closely they discovered its reading was 55 degrees 48 minutes, which is just south of Edinburgh.

Walton Lodge was once the home of the Mylne family. Robert Mylne (1633-1710) was the last Master Mason to the Crown of Scotland, while his uncle, John Mylne (1611-1677), an Edinburgh MP, was also a master mason and was responsible for the earliest dated dial of this type.