Thoughts, no. 264
William Willett was a London builder who rode out early on summer mornings near Petts Wood and was bothered by all the drawn blinds. He spent years arguing that the clocks should go forward twenty minutes on each of four Sundays in April, so that nobody could sleep through the light. Parliament kept declining. He died in 1915, and Britain passed summer time the next year, because of the war. His memorial stands in Petts Wood and it is a sundial, set permanently to summer time. So all winter it disagrees with every clock around it by an hour. It’s the only sundial I know of that is wrong on purpose, and it is still making his case to anyone who walks past in winter.
Written at the house on .