Wind And Fire

Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside, but this public art isn't in a go-to spot. It is in the East Shore Village housing estate. It was the former Vane Tempest Colliery, which opened in 1849 and employed more than 3,000 at its peak in 1914. Seaham Harbour was convenient for shipping coal, but the colliery closed in 1990. You may recognise Jewels of the Sea in the background.

Wind And Fire consists of three simplistic, but effective installations depicting wind with a sundial inside some solar flares? The artist is Craig Knowles who designed and used his blacksmith techniques to create this in metal. He is known for works such as Take Flight and Shadows in Another Light both on the St. Peters Riverside Sculpture trail, Sunderland. He also designed several pieces in Elba Park.

I found the installation aesthetically pleasing and educational. It got me thinking about the wind and sundials.

Being on the coast, there are sea breezes, where in the afternoon, the wind picks up as the land heats faster than the sea. From our science lessons at school, we know that cold air sinks while warmer air rises.

The study of wind is called anemology. It is essential for seed dispersal which is called anemochory. The wind forms Aeolian landscapes like sand dunes, and these days it is harnessed for its energy.

The sundial led me to research and from the British Sundial Society (BSS) there are 4,800 sundials in the British Isles. This is an equatorial sundial. The BSS regarding equatorial sundials states:

"522 in the Register. Also known as Equinoctial dials or Armillary spheres. The only vital components are the gnomon (pointing as always to the Pole Star) and the equatorial ring on which the hours are marked. However several other rings may be introduced, and they can be the most attractive of all dials. This dial has the simplest of mathematics, with the hours marked at regular 15-degree intervals around the equatorial ring."

The pointy bit is called the gnomon and is lined up with Polaris, the Pole Star. Between the spring and autumn solstices, the time is indicated by the shadow of the gnomon on the outer ring with the hours represented as nodules. An inscription tells us it is set to British Summer Time (BST). I was there just before 10h00.

Tempest Fugit is a play on Tempus Fugit which is Latin for Time flies Taken from Virgil's (70BC to 19 BC) The Georgics. The English form is often merely descriptive: "Time flies like the wind." Thank you, Wikipedia.