Why is that Chancel at a different angle from the rest of the Church?

For those of you who have worked on many Churches, especially when you have been involved in either surveying them of dealing with existing plans of them, I’m sure you will have noticed something.

The building is aligned on an east-west axis, but the Chancel sometimes seems to be beyond this axis- aligned differently to the nave by a degree or so. Some Churches are more visible than others, however the thing which interests me is that there seems to be no pattern or relationship between the dates or development of the building and how acute this angle is.

 

 

Two examples where the angle of the chancel is different to the Nave.

 

When I first noticed this I thought, oh it must be the difference in either the technical advances or skill set to build the chancel, the earliest part of the church to a true east-west. I now think that this is not the case at all as the craftsmen who built these buildings, in the Saxon, Norman, Early and Late Medieval through to the 19^th Century all had a deep understanding of their craft.

There are many ideas to explain this. They range from the notion of the Devil not being able to see the Altar if he were to look through the keyhole of the Church to the poor craftsmanship argument and others. There is also the idea that the builders made the building ‘imperfect’ to symbolise our ‘sins’, or to emphasise the perfection of what everyone would be worshiping, I suspect you could put all kinds of reasons to this idea.

My favourite idea is that, say for example you wished to build a Church which would be dedicated to St Margaret;- in the past the Saints’ days would have been known much more commonly than they are now, as society revolved around the church and the ecclesiastical calendar. The mason and possibly a Canon or Bishop would be at the site of the new building before dawn, maybe with a small entourage, and as the sun rose on that particular day, the two men would arrange the orientation of the Chancel, the most important part of the building, to the point at which the sun rose on that day.

Now I realise that this is all a bit romantic, the idea of the people standing there on the misty dawn, with their staffs, and as the sun broke through the horizon the staffs would be pushed into the ground and create the setting out of a building which is still standing a thousand years later.

The practical reason why I like this idea is that it would explain the variation in the layouts and varying degrees of angles which are found among the buildings dedicated to all the different Saints.

For example, St Margaret’s day in the medieval calendar is on 16^th November, whereas St Mary’s day was on the 15^th August. It won’t surprise you to know that in the medieval calendar there were a lot of Saints’ days. However if one were to look at the Chancel orientations of St Mary’s Church compared to St Margaret’s they are different due to the time of year, and so this may explain the variations which we see.

So why not align the rest of the church to that angle I hear you say? Well if you are dealing with craftsmen who are told to build the building to an east-west axis; that is what they will do. From a theological or liturgical point of view, it also emphasises the importance and sacredness of the Chancel. In earlier centuries this where the Canons Priests or monks would have prayed, the Nave was for the common ‘masses’, who would watch on from outside the Chancel in the nave, with the events going on in the Chancel only visible through the Chancel screen or Rood Screen (Rood Screen has a cross above it).

 

 

 

Good example of chancel and Rood Screens, these were mostly made from timber during the 18^th & 19^th Century’s, the early screens were made from stone.