In Medieval times – around the time of early modern Christianity – people associated the east and south with light, resurrection, and divine favour.
The north was “cold and unhallowed” – literally receiving less sunlight, and symbolically aligned with darkness or the devil.
Inside the church, alters faced the east to face the rising sun and this extended to outside of the church too.
In the churchyard, the north side of the was reserved for unbaptised infants, strangers, people who ‘ended things on their own terms’, criminals or excommunicated people.
Ordinary parishioners preferred to be buried in the south, east, or west positions – believed to be the more blessed place.
In the north east, The Devil’s Acre’ came to be used as a localised or folkloric nickname to describe the ‘unhallowed’ northern side of the churchyard.
Old graveyards ‘were crowded on the right, but very seldom on the wrong’
As time went on, burials gradually spread northwards, but older generations in the region still held onto this belief longer than other areas of the UK.
