East-west alignment

Summary.The conventional view that Christian buildings and burials are strictly east-west in alignment does not apply much to the cathedral. The cathedral is out-of-line by 27 degrees and many burials show a chaotic alignment. Explanations for the orientation of the cathedral are unsupported and the best view is the builders were having to take into account the topography of the bedrock.

    One of the first observations made by visitors looking along the cathedral is it is not straight. The nave to the central tower and transepts appears not to be the same alignment as the tower along the choir to the east end chapel. It has a 2^o kink. The explanation can only be a defect in the building and a consequence of constructing in sections at different times in the 13th-century.

            The cathedral is also out-of-line on an east-west axis. Robert Plot stated the cathedral declined by 27 degrees from the true points.[1] He gave several curious theories why churches should face due east and why there was a declination.[2]

 

View of cathedral from Google Maps.

     There is a general understanding that all churches face directly east. Many do not, especially where space is restricted; their orientation accords with the surroundings. Savage thought the strongly marked ancient boundary could not have been enlarged and this restriction of space effectually barred any rebuilding of the cathedral on a much larger scale.[3] He also noted the cathedral was built with ‘a marked swerve northward,’ and claimed this was compelled by the line of the ledge of rock on which the foundations were laid.[4]

             There is no evidence cathedrals and churches were orientated to face the point where the sun arose on the feast day of the patronal figure, in Lichfield’s case March 2 the death day of Chad. Benson thought it was in line of sunrise on St Peter’s Day, 1 August, in the 12th-century. Neither was it the case of facing when the sun rose on an equinox or a solstice day. There is no way the cathedral could have been satisfactorily aligned to face Jerusalem. However, east was held to be where earthly paradise lies; Jesus was believed to have ascended into heaven east of where the disciples were standing.[5] Christians are buried facing eastwards, so to arise before Christ when he comes again. Consequently, the high altar is at the east end and that is where the daily and weekly services were held from the time of the Norman Conquest in most churches and from early in the first (presumably) and second cathedral at Lichfield. In the current cathedral mass was celebrated at the high altar which meant the public worshippers would only hear it behind the pulpitum or choir screen. There is no evidence of an altar on the west, nave side of the pulpitum. This continued until the Victorian restoration of the cathedral starting in the 1850s.

            There are many graves in the Close which are not strictly facing east.

[1] R. Plot, The Natural History of Staffordshire, (Oxford: 1686), 362–9. Plot found the deviation when taking a compass to the ‘battlements of the middle steeple.’ He justified the east as being significant by citing various events from the Bible, mostly Old Testament. He believed the church should have faced the equinox rise of the sun, but had a blemish, p367. He thought Bishop Roger Clinton was to blame. He concluded the declination from the precise east was not essential for devotion, p368. Other churches not precisely facing eastwards were mentioned, p369.

[2] Remarked on by R. Willis, ‘On foundations of early buildings recently discovered in Lichfield Cathedral’, The Archaeological Journal, (1861), 18, 3.

[3] H. E. Savage, The fourteenth century builders, Unpub. article in the cathedral library, (1916), 18.

[4] Ibid, 20

[5] N. Orme, Going to Church in Medieval England, (Yale: 2021), 93.