What they are
The Millennium Stones, recorded by the British Sundial Society as the Ardington and Lockinge Millennium Sundial, are two very large sundials in woodland at Ardington, set up to mark the year 2000. Both were designed and made by the sundial maker David Harber in Purbeck stone and stainless steel.
How the two dials work
The first is a noon mark: a curved mirror and a standing stone about 200 metres to the south. At noon by the sun, when the sun is due south, a flash of light shows at the southern stone. That stone, close to the road, carries a plaque for the Equation of Time, which relates sun time to Greenwich Mean Time.
Up the slope is the second dial: 13 pairs of standing Purbeck stones in a great semicircle round a central disc that stands for the sun. Each pair forms a narrow vertical slit, and at midsummer sunlight passes through each slit in turn, once an hour from 6am to 6pm. A plaque shows the time the sun shines through each slit on any other day of the year, and further plaques mark where shadows fall at the solstices and equinoxes. Discs set into the ground round the sun mark where the planets were on 1 January 2000, with notes on their orbits; Pluto is included, as it was then counted as a planet.
Visiting
The stones are in woodland off School Road in Ardington, and there is a free car park on School Road a short distance west of the noon dial. The walk from Ardington in our walks section is a good way to combine them with the village and the Lockinge estate.