Grave and nave: an architecture of cemeteries and sanctuaries in rural Ontario.

Abstract:

Cultural landscapes are architectural creations, which is to say that all mankind's scratchings on the earth surface have a style as well as a substance. In this essay we explore the design of Christian church sites and burying grounds established throughout rural Ontario and dating from the early nineteenth century. The liturgical significance of having graves and church aisles facing east appears to have been widely understood and appreciated, but applying these rules on the land frequently failed to occur. In a field study of 150 cemeteries and more than 200 church buildings we find that burials hold to the rule of eastness much more than did churches. We discuss possible reasons for this inconsistency in landscape design.

Resume: Les paysages culturels sont des creations architecturales, ce qui revient a dire que toutes les marques laissees par l'humanite sur la surface terrestre ont un style autant qu'une substance. Nous explorons dans cet article la configuration de sites d'eglises et de cimetieres chretiens construits dans l'Ontario rurale a partir du debut du dix-neuvieme siecle. La signification liturgique de l'orientation vers l'est des tombes et des nefs laterales semble avoir ete bien comprise et appreciee, mais l'application de ces regles ne s'est souvent pas concretisee sur les sites. Notre etude de terrain de 150 cimetieres et de plus de 200 eglises revele que l'orientation vers l'est des premiers est beaucoup plus frequente que les secondes. Nous discutons des raisons probables de cette inconsistance du paysage culture ontarien.

**********

In Halton Region, on the Guelph Line road north of Highway 401, stands a handsome, eye-catching, tiny country church: St John's Anglican, Nassagaweya. Built in 1871, it is a limestone sanctuary standing square to the road, on the eastward side; the narthex door opens within steps of the graveled shoulder. Persons entering face away from the road into a simple nave, their eyes drawn straight along the central aisle to the slightly-raised chancel at the easterly end. Outside in the cemetery regular echelons of headstones signify burial plots row upon row. To scan the inscriptions one stands at the back of the site and looks westerly to the fronts of the markers, many of them flat marble slabs bearing dates from the middle of the nineteenth century. (Figure 1) This looks thoroughly orderly and unremarkable.

But the St John's setting is intensely remarkable. The burial layout is skewed diagonally to the church building, to the boundary of the site, and to the perpendicular country roads on which it corners. Pace out a triangle: a wall of the building, a line of grave markers, and the roadside. The site breaks into many triangles, a shape decidedly uncharacteristic of Ontario's rural geometry. Far from being some Euclidian oddity, we argue that this layout has deep symbolic meaning in the cultural history of Ontario and the wider world. St John's is a stressed landscape. Nave and grave are in conflict, their relative alignments betraying tension between spiritual and temporal principles in a society looking for order on the land that many early occupants saw as a frightening wilderness in need of subjugation.

We have deliberately used the words 'eastward' and 'easterly' in preference to 'east.' That choice takes us straight to the heart of the conflict. For Christianity, the direction 'east' holds special significance. The nativity star stood in the east; the Magi came from the east. Sanctuaries face east, and burials are with the feet to the east, allowing the incumbent to rise facing the dawn on the Day of Judgment. A compass tells us that the St John's cemetery faces due east, while the sanctuary faces northeast. Yet expectation tells us that the cemetery looks wrong, and therefore maybe it is. One has only to drive the adjacent country roads and see fence lines at right-angles to one another, and barns, houses, laneways, edges of woodlots, and so many other rural elements--including other cemeteries and churches--positioned squarely to the roadsides. The visible anomaly of the St John's cemetery draws attention to the perceived correctness of the St John's sanctuary. How we wish we could have been flies on the wall at the meeting when the parishioners laid out their cemetery, and to have seen a member--perhaps a retired land surveyor or amateur astronomer--admonish those around the table who, without a second thought, were inclined to approve a layout in which graves were square to the property lines. That would have been so easy, and, as we shall see, was frequently done.