Aspects of the alignment and location of medieval rural churches

Abstract

This thesis explores the alignment of medieval rural churches and discusses whether their differing alignments have any specific meaning.It also examines the location of rural church sites and the chronology of church creation in relation to the process of settlement nucleation, the topography of church sites and their possible reuse.A survey of almost 2000 rural medieval churches provides the basis for this study.Part I provides a broad context for the detailed consideration of the results of the survey and their significance.It summarises earlier church alignment studies and the issues that they raise; the practice of alignment more generally; studies of the rural church and its place in the landscape; and earlier studies of medieval rural settlement.Part II describes the survey methodology and its basic results, applies the results to the theories advanced in earlier studies and evaluates them in the light of this new evidence.Part III discusses and analyses two significant variations which have been uncovered: the clear pattern of spatial variation in church alignment between the east and the west of the country, and the fact that between two and three times as many churches were built on east-facing slopes as on west-facing slopes.Possible reasons for these variations are evaluated and discussed.It suggests that harvest dates may have been a factor in the decision to build a church and that churches appear to be aligned with sunrise at early harvest completions.It also examines the chronology of the adoption of church sites and the development of local burial in rural areas.The possible relationship between earlier pagan sites and church sites, as part of the process of "Christian substitution", is discussed, particularly in relation to the use of east-facing slopes.It proposes that local burial sites were adopted in villages early in the settlement nucleation process and that these graveyards provided the sites for the later building of churches, resulting in a bias of churches on east-facing slopes as the middle-Saxon burial sites seem to have sought them out previously.

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