Castle Aching

[Edwardian]

Wow!

 

I do like that mad horse-electric car. Running the horse continuously at optimum rate, and using the battery to deal with peak loads certainly has potential, given that most cars spend most of their time standing still.

 

Wonder if it might be better to run the horse at night, at home, to charge the battery, rather than lug the blooming thing around, though ....... horses are quite heavy, aren't they?

 

6 horsepower.hours of charging would supply a daily commute of half-hour each way at an average of 6hp, which would actually be quite workable in urban traffic.

 

But, is a horse on a treadmill charging a battery the most efficient engine for converting grass into stored-energy in a useable form? Wouldn't a bio-digester (a sort of artificial horse-stomach), be able to achieve better?

 

K

 

Not to mention the benefits to rose growers. 

 

Actually, if you compress horse manure to bricks and air-dry them thoroughly, it makes good solid fuel.

 

 

sorry to read that you have had to take to your bed....

However it does permit wayward visitors to your thread to lever open even more OT questions - such as:

How so?

How many places might we think of where the Church has compromised on Ecclesiatical North (or Liturgical East)?

 

In Valletta, Malta - a grid iron fortified city oriented NE/SW - all the Catholic churches, an Anglican cathedral and a Scottish Presbyterian church are obliged to compromise with a liturgical East that can never be Cardinal east.

 

Liverpool Anglican cathedral's altar is at the south end

 

dh

 

You raise an important point, to what extent would the liturgical orientation of a Mediaeval Norfolk church match the compass points. 

 

However, the examples you give are far from Mediaeval Norfolk churches, and are all examples of a physically restricted site forcing the builders to modify the orientation.  In the case of Liverpool Cathedral, the site is St James's Mount, which forced the east end to the south east.

 

While I am not familiar with the example of Valletta, your description of it as "a grid iron fortified city oriented NE/SW", seems explanation enough for the compromise.

 

The Mediaeval church builder in Norfolk did not necessarily face such constraints, and, indeed, he may have taken the matter of orientation to the east more literally than figuratively in those days.

 

It seems that, to my list of research topics must be sampling some Norfolk churches to see how closely they align to the map orientation.  Some leeway is obviously required, given the divergence between Grid North and magnetic North, and the changing position of the latter, but it would be interesting to see if there was, in general, an effort to orientate correctly, and, whether much uniformity was attained. 

[TheQ]

No need to do some Church research, some one has already done it!!  (Ian Hinton PHD of the University of East Anglia)

 The Answers to all your questions are in there, Edwardian and more....

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/231829719_Church_Alignment_and_Patronal_Saint%27s_Days (it's one heafty document)

After wading through it it appears the 549 Norfolk churches average out so the eastern end was at 88.9 degrees.

 

 The only oddity is that the further east you are in England the closer to 90 degrees they are, West Cornwall (72 churches surveyed) averages out at 80.4 degrees.

Edited January 10, 2017 by TheQ

[Edwardian]

No need to do some Church research, some one has already done it!!  (Ian Hinton PHD of the University of East Anglia)

 The Answers to all your questions are in there, Edwardian and more....

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/231829719_Church_Alignment_and_Patronal_Saint%27s_Days (it's one heafty document)

After wading through it it appears the 549 Norfolk churches average out so the eastern end was at 88.9 degrees.

 

 The only oddity is that the further east you are in England the closer to 90 degrees they are, West Cornwall (72 churches surveyed) averages out at 80.4 degrees.

 

Brilliant find.  I shall have to read it in full, but I note the passage on p13/217 concerning the necessarily short-building season for East Anglian churches and how the orientation did not relate to the direction of sunrise at the time of year building work could commence.

 

Generally the builders seem uninfluenced by direction of sun rise, sticking much closer to Cardinal East, a "point" that represented wind direction.

 

Incidentally, at 12/220 I note that no Norfolk churches were built at the highest point in the parish, but most were located on rising ground. Most chose to face downhill to the east, which is interesting, as this was generally the orientation I had envisaged; the east end nearest the front of the layout on an oblique left-right alignment, with the ground rising to the left and rear. Happy coincidence!

 

I must delve further!

 

Going back to sleep now, though

[runs as required]

Thank you for diverting your thread to include some interesting analyses of church orientations.

 

You are right about the challenges of physically restricted sites - and that is the attraction of them - places 'on the edge'.

 

A church that appeals to me because of this is Burton Dassett on the southern border of Warwickshire. It is built into the side of the hill so has a series of steps inside and (slopes to the floors) in its determination to face east.

Oddly looking at the satellite view it actually aligns ENE. Were it to have faced Cardinal east, it seems to me it might have eased the masons' slope problems (glad it didn't).

 

Hope you arise from the sick-bed soon (to get weathering those north facing village elevations ).

dh

[Nearholmer]

Sounds as if these churches might be aligned on equinoctial sunrise (which was one way of characterising "east") in the year of construction, or perhaps matching the alignment of underlying pre-Christian structures, themselves aligned on equinoctial sunrise at some dim and distant date.

 

This year, equinoctial sunrise is at about 89 degrees, but go back into early Medieval times, and spring/autumn sunrises at our latitude we're way down below 80 degrees, I think.

 

Anyway, that's what Mr O'Doolight suggests. [ Edit: And, he is wrong in some of it! Churches were often aligned on equinoctial sunrise, or on sunrise on the day of their patron saint, but equinoctial sunrise is always due East ....... although it varies by date, and precesses against the background of distant, fixed, stars.]

 

K

Edited January 10, 2017 by Nearholmer

[Shadow]

Taking this alignment topic even further, would the Metropolitan Pyramid Company's output be aligned in any special way? Or just positioned at the whim of the occupier?

[Caley Jim]

Taking this alignment topic even further, would the Metropolitan Pyramid Company's output be aligned in any special way? Or just positioned at the whim of the occupier?

I would assume that alignment would be at 90° to the horizontal.      (unless, of course they were built by an Italian firm of tower builders!   )

 

Jim

[DonB]

Sounds as if these churches might be aligned on equinoctial sunrise (which was one way of characterising "east") in the year of construction, or perhaps matching the alignment of underlying pre-Christian structures, themselves aligned on equinoctial sunrise at some dim and distant date.

 

This year, equinoctial sunrise is at about 89 degrees, but go back into early Medieval times, and spring/autumn sunrises at our latitude we're way down below 80 degrees, I think.

 

Anyway, that's what Mr O'Doolight suggests.

 

K

 

 

A near-by church with a Saxon Crypt, the site predates the Viking occupation hereabouts, Looking on Google Earth it's East end is aligned at about 79 degrees. 

[Nearholmer]

Shadow

 

Very simple really: the pyramids are aligned so that the main passage into them aligns with the position of the star Alpha Draconis, as it was when crossing the meridian below the Pole, in 2170BC.

 

Whimsy in this matter would be, well, ...... frivolous.

 

Kevin

Edited January 10, 2017 by Nearholmer

[Nearholmer]

The more I waste my brain on the question of church orientation, the more I think Mr O'Doolight might have misled us in post 2280 ...... he is correct about using equinoctial sunrise to identify east, but I'm not sure he was right in the rest of what he suggested. He was getting confused with the fact that the equinoxes precess against the fixed stars, and vary in date on a fixed calendar.

 

(I've been attempting to do plumbing today, which I loath, and will use any feeble excuse to take a break from!)

 

Kevin

Edited January 10, 2017 by Nearholmer

[Donw]

Personally I reckon when a lot of these Churches were built someone reputedly able worked out which way was east declared it to be so and the masons got on with building it. I cannot believe anyone worried about a few degrees either way. Now if it was Norwich Cathedral that would be a different matter. That being said I suspect most were not that far off. Presumably most places would have had a sun dial at some point which meant aligning due south. We all know the midday due south is the shortest shadow but could you be certain with a few degrees and if your sundial was a smidgin off who would know if 12 o'clock was 5 mins late remembering everywhere had local time until the railway came. when of course apart from those on meridian zero everyone's midday was early or late. 

BTW wouldn't the height of the visible horizon make a difference to sunrise? Here we have to wait until it climbs over the Quantocks about 300m high and sunset is early when over Dunkery Beacon over 500m high with us at a mere 60m or so. I suppose Norfolk being 'flat' it would have less effect.

Lastly there is an interesting case at Godshill IOW where  reputedly a hill had been a site of Pagan worship when they started building a church below the hill each morning the stone had been moved to the top after three days of this it was decided it was gods wish it was at the top hence the name Godshill. What truth there is in this story I leave to your judgement.

 

Don

[runs as required]

(I've been attempting to do plumbing today, which I loath, and will use any feeble excuse to take a break from!)

Kevin

When I lived in Liverpool and put the first indoor loo in the street into our house (469 Grafton Street overlooking Herculaneum and Brunswick docks) my Scouse plumber's slogan, chalked on his handcart was

"It might be sh*t to you, it's bread and butter to me"

dh

 

Edit

to correct the scousers' sh#te language

Edited January 10, 2017 by runs as required

[runs as required]

Personally I reckon when a lot of these Churches were built someone reputedly able worked out which way was east declared it to be so and the masons got on with building it. I cannot believe anyone worried about a few degrees either way. Now if it was Norwich Cathedral that would be a different matter.

I'm not so sure about village masons being rough and ready oicks away from the cathedrals.

 

Here in the 'land of the the Prince Bishops', (far far away from prosperous Mediaeval Norfolk) our local church overlooking the Tyne has a precision example of early 1300c 3D carpentry supporting the lead spire.

The 1220 church had been burnt when  'Braveheart' William Wallace with his Scots army sacked the village in 1298, and the blackened ruin of the fortified tower needed to be rebuilt in the early 1300s.

 

EXTRACT FROM THE WEBSITE

 

Outwardly the striking lead spire interacts dramatically with our often grey skies. The lead is symbolic too, for the spire marks the end of the lead road down from the hills. Here at the limit of the tide on the Tyne, the lead was transferred at the Willows from packhorses onto the water for shipping away by sea to roof Europe and London.  

 

Inwardly the spire is anything but simple. Hidden away is the most elegantly conceived 3D timber structure supporting the heavy chevron pattern leadwork precision geometry.

All this was worked out in the early 1300s by scratching and scoring out the geometry on a mud/lime floor...I can barely get my head around it using a computer!

dh

 

The internal structure was surveyed and plotted in CAD nearly 20 years ago while we were bidding to install the Millennium Ring of 8 bells. It is sad that less than a handfull of Rytonians have experienced it.

 

The complex geometry might partly be explained by recalling that by 1300 the Crusades had resulted in a transfer to Europe of the Muslims’ advanced mathematical understanding of abstract geometries and patterns - developed because their Faith forbade figurative art.

Muslims wove extraordinarily intricate carpet patterns and erected the most complex ceramic tiled architectural vaults, while Christians worked at painting and sculpting Holy figures and developing an understandng of anatomy.

 

END

[TheQ]

Minor correction Here, William the Welshman, Wallace only became "braveheart" when that Australian / American, Mel Gibson mangled British history, Braveheart was Robert The Bruce, who after his death had his heart cut out and taken on crusade.

 

I'd agree most churches are laid out professionally, it's been shown master masons travelled throughout europe working on major projects. For a local church the master mason was probably was on contract to the local Bishop, who would have authorised the local church. However once laid out lesser masons would have carried out the work.

 

That being said, a great many of East Anglian churches are Saxon not Norman or later. The earliest of the Norfolk Churches have round Towers not square, there are few records of their construction.

 

Norwich Cathedral replaced two Saxon churches on the site, I'm not sure why that site had two churches, if there was a monastory they often had one church for the brothers and one for the public. Alternatively in Norfolk there are several cases of two adjoining parishes having their churches next to each other on one site, (there is a case of 3 parish churches on one site).

[Donw]

I do not underestimate the ability of the the masons and carpenters. However while aligning things with something definite is a practical matter aligning it with due east is more difficult deciding exactly what and where is the east? What with the magnetic pole being off from the axis of spin  which itself appears to move with the seasons. The precise path of the earth which causes the minima of the sunrise and sunset to occur on different days is something I find hard to visualise.

Don

[Nearholmer]

Just struck me that one alignment approach was to work to sunrise on Easter morning ........ and, after the Synod of Whitby, Easter was (is?) calculated according to a fixed calendar, and the theoretical, not necessarily actual, phase of the moon, so could vary a lot from equinox. This year it is four days, and c3 degrees different in sunrise orientation, for instance. In 2015, Easter was c11 degrees from Equinox.

 

(For some reason, I've always remembered that the Synod of Whitby 'sorted' the calculation of Easter, after seeing St Cuthbert's 'Bible' in an exhibition at the British Museum c25 years ago)

 

And, yes, actual sunrise position, and star-rises etc, are affected by the nature of the horizon, which is why a lot of 'stone circles' are set on raised plateaus, to give a good, clear, 'true' horizon all round ...... there are some cracking ones in Cornwall, set on the spine of the land, with sea horizons. And, of course, some churches used the same sites, Carnac is a stark example.

 

K

[Nick Holliday]

All this talk of church layouts and alignments brings to mind a fascinating theory espoused in an intriguing book “Patterns of the Past” by Guy Underwood, which is well worth reading to provide an alternative perspective on the British landscape and early buildings.

His theory involved the identification of a number of different underground “Earth Forces” or “Geodetic Lines”, which he was able to detect using simple dowsing techniques. He named three types: Water Lines, Track Lines and Aquastats, and he developed theories as to how humans and animals reacted instinctively to these forces.

For example, he believed that animals would follow track lines, although they were not necessarily straight, and if you’ve ever walked across an open area of grass and wondered why the foot-worn path didn’t run directly from A-B, like a ley-line, but wandered slightly from side to side, with parallel paths of different widths which would combine and split seemingly randomly, then he would argue that these were directly following the complex subterranean track lines.

Other features he identified, such as spirals, were associated with wells and springs, and in his researches he found that they often coincided with the locations of fonts in medieval churches, as well as with outbreaks of mistletoe. He mapped a number of sites, and at each he found the dowsing predicted the layout of the structure, with odd doors appearing where track lines entered the footprint, accounting for the individual nature of all of these early buildings. It even provided an explanation as to why some churches appeared too small for their original congregations, whilst others were cavernous spaces for only a handful of parishioners, as the outline of the building would have been defined by key geodetic lines and phenomena.

He also surveyed a number of antiquarian sites such as Stonehenge, other stone circles and Cerne Abbas Giant, and his results appeared to correlate with current knowledge in a remarkable way, and potentially offering further insights into the original form.

Underwood seems to have been sceptical of the more outlandish claims made for dowsing by people who we would now call "New Age". For him, dowsing was a skill that anyone could learn, and not the preserve of an elite claiming some mysterious special gift.

 

Edited January 11, 2017 by Nick Holliday

[Nearholmer]

If there is anything in these sorts of theories, it might lie in 'megnetoreception', the ability of many animals, and maybe in a residual state in humans, to sense magnetic fields. Various animals an either read the earth's magnetic field or the very localised variations in field caused by geology and/or (possibly) water acting as a low-reluctance, field concentrating, medium. If you make the big leap, and assume that human loss of this sense is very recent, then maybe people within the past few thousands of years could 'read' magnetic fields (they aren't "energies" though, they are fields).

 

Probably a bit difficult today, because the natural field strengths are teeny-weeny compared with all the artificial ones we've created in the past two centuries,

 

Has this got anything even slightly to do with the WNR?

 

K

Edited January 11, 2017 by Nearholmer

[uax6]

Probably not, but its not stopped us before has it?

 

Andy G

Edited January 11, 2017 by uax6

[wagonman]

Here in the Glaven Valley we have a plethora of churches, two of which can be seen simultaneously on what was opposite sides of the estuary. Cley has a large nave built in the C14 on the site – and presumably the alignment – of an earlier church, Wiveton I suspect is original. Viewed together their orientation is clearly different by as much as 10 degrees. As to which is correct I cannot say. Must go out with a compass and have a measure...

Edited January 11, 2017 by wagonman

[Donw]

If one was sensitive to electromagnetic fields you could find yourself following pylon routes.

 

We got here discussing the alignment of Norfolk churches. It would seem that there is a variation of up to 10deg  but it is unclear whether this might be deliberate or accidental. However a far as Edwardian's choice of alignment seeing as he can determine which direction is east and therefore has the option of aligning this for artistic or practical reasons. Only if you have two churches in view would it be an issue.

 I am reminded of the H0n2 layout (Dead River and Cassabaret IIRC) where two harbours supposedly on the same bit of coast were on opposite sides on an asile even more oddly the tide was in at one and out at the other. Such is the degree of license given by modelling.

 

Don 

[Shadow]

The grass will be greener above the course of the underground stream. They're just following a path of better grass. Or they can hear the water running underneath. Our Jack Russell can hear a mole fart in it's tunnel two fields away and then goes chasing after it to try and dig it up!

[Andy Hayter]

I think too much stress is being made on being able to align to due East. Can you see the horizon? When exactly is the equinox?

 

You only need one cardinal point and then you have them all. Due South can be found on any sunny day and from that you have due North, West and East.

 

Put a stick in the ground. Get a small boy to scrape out the track of the tip of the shadow in the ground through the middle of the day. The point closest to the stick is due North - directly opposite due South which was where the sun was. And of course you can do it at any time of the year.

 

Edit to change detail of measurement

Edited January 11, 2017 by Andy Hayter

[Edwardian]

Am ambulatory!

 

Still slightly delirious, but that's probably coincidental!

 

There is a lot of catching up to do!

[s.e. charles]

i have always slept better with the head of the bed facing North. (living in USA). i don't know if someone in Australia would find a South orientation more calming.