"For a start, very few English medieval churches are exactly oriented to, er, the orient! So the alternative hypothesis has arisen of east being taken from sunrise on either the patronal festival or the date of dedication of the church."
One would think, though, that there would be some sort of instruction, somewhere, telling people to take this measurement, if it were used.
There's a third possibility, namely, that locals just knew which direction was "east". It may or may
not have been an "east" that we would recognize with a compass, but that doesn't matter from the point of view of giving diretions, telling where the stray cattle had last been seen, or building a church. For the latter, other features of the local landscape (flat ground, nearness to a source of water) may have been more important. As I recall Maine is supposed to be "down east" (I'm not sure from where, and stand ready to be corrected), and my
own experience in rural parts suggests that local compass points can be quite idiosyncratic.
As John points out, precision may not have been an issue in the past. a generalized direction of sunrise might have been enough.
Meg
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