medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 11:05 AM, John Briggs <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I did once pick up an offprint of an article (which may or may have been
> that one - I can't find it) while attending a talk on the orientation of St
> George's, Bloomsbury (so accurate that it was suggested Edmond Halley helped
> Hawksmoor with the latest scientific instruments...) The authors of that
> talk have published:
>
> "The Orientation of Churches: some new evidence" by Jason R Ali and Peter
> Cunich, in The Antiquaries Journal, Volume 81, 2001.
John's offprint would have been of Ali, Jason R., and Peter Cunich.
“The Church East and West: Orienting the Queen Anne Churches,
1711-34.” The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 64,
no. 1 (March 2005): 66-73. The abstract states that "we suggest that
two of Hawksmoor's churches at St. Anne Limehouse and Christchurch
Spitalfields, and James Gibbs's St. Martin-in-the-Fields, were so
accurately aligned that the only feasible technique for achieving this
was through the use of declination-corrected compasses. We speculate
that the scientist Edmond Halley provided information and logistical
assistance to Hawksmoor." It is available on JSTOR:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/25068124
The Antiquaries Journal also published a 2006 paper, "Church Alignment
and Patronal Saint’s Days," by Ian Hinton in Volume 86, 2006. I have
not read it, but according to the abstract "the results of this survey
of almost 1,500 rural churches do not support the oft-repeated idea
that churches are aligned with their patronal saint’s sunrise." We
can probably assume that this is not the paper that Jon is trying to
remember, but it may well cite it.
Phil Feller
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