Note 542 — Chapter V · THE ORIENTATION OF CHURCHES

Consult Sir J. Norman Lockyer’s Dawn of Astronomy (1894), especially chs. vii., viii., ix., xxx., xxxviii.; also Stonehenge, pp. 1-5. The views expressed, however, have been much canvassed (e.g. Edinburgh Review, CLXXX. 1894, pp. 418-432); S. Laing, Human Origins, 1892, pp. 136-149; E. J. Simcox, op. cit. II. pp. 438-440; W. M. Flinders Petrie, Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh, 1885, pp. 125-7 (for orientation of Pyramids). In England there is a tendency, in certain districts, for early churches to be ranged in a North-to-South line, and roughly at equal distances (F. J. Bennett, in South-Eastern Naturalist, 1904, pp. 29-36). Again, the churchyard yews of the Surrey villages, Alfold, Dunsfold and Hambledon, stand “almost in a mathematically straight line,” the Dunsfold tree being almost exactly midway (E. Parker, Highways and Byways of Surrey, 1908, p. 165). In all these cases the positions, where not determined by geographical and geological considerations, are, I think, accidental.