Don’t forget to put your clocks and watches forward an hour this weekend. Despite the wintry scenes outside my window as I write this – and further warnings of snow and ice on the radio – March 25 marks the beginning of British Summer Time. It’s important to me because we will be holding a viewing from 10am for our upcoming Fine Painting Auction on March 28.
Several people take the credit for coming up with the idea of changing the time to suit the seasons, from Benjamin Franklin to George Hudson, an entomologist from New Zealand, who wanted more time after work to look for insects. His efforts were recognised by the award of the YK Sidney Medal in 1933 after New Zealand introduced the Summer-Time Act 1927.
We also have a relatively local figure of significance in this. Farnham-born builder William Willett, having noted how people slept through the first part of summer sunlit mornings, wrote the pamphlet The Waste of Daylight in 1907, proposing the gradual moving forwards of the clocks during the summer, thereby saving £2.5 million in early evening lighting costs. Germany and Austria’s decision to move summer time to save on coal during the First World War prompted the British to follow suit in 1916… too late for Willett, who had died the year before, aged just 58, of influenza.
