The most heedless observer must have noticed the main facts. The choir or chancel of a cathedral or parish church faces East, while the nave runs towards the West. The exceptions form a trifling minority. Casting about for an explanation of these exceptions, it will be found that the buildings which infringe the rule are usually modern, or that the exigencies of space permitted no alternative, or that there has been a spirit of opposition manifested of set purpose. Let us first notice a few examples where the rule is broken. The small, modern church of Well, Lincolnshire, is indeed built East and West, but the altar is situated at the West end. Eastville church, in the same county, runs North and South, its altar being towards the South[484]. St Mary Major, Exeter, which lies to the West of the cathedral, is alined North-East and South-West, but the alteration was probably made in 1866, when the church was rebuilt. The original building was of Norman date[485], and would scarcely be out of line. St Paul’s, Covent Garden, built by Inigo Jones in 1633, and rebuilt at the close of the eighteenth century, has its axis about 30° North of the East-to-West line, but the altar stands at what must be called the “East” end of the church. St John’s, Chatham, another church which transgresses the principle, was erected in the years immediately preceding the Oxford Movement, at a time when the practice of orientation had grown lax[486]. Several Georgian churches in the Paddington and Marylebone districts are out of line, while, strange to tell, a Primitive Methodist Chapel in Seymour Place, hard by, is properly orientated[487]. The fact is noticeable, since the custom is not widely observed by Nonconformists. Camden church, Peckham, is built askew, but that is doubtless owing to its founders having consisted of a coalition of Nonconformists and dissatisfied churchmen from the mother parish of Camberwell. In the Georgian era, as is well known, there was general slackness: fonts were often placed in the North and South aisles, ornaments were neglected, brasses stolen, documents mislaid and misused. To this period of slovenly treatment can be traced the anomalous alinement of St George’s, Bloomsbury. The Eastern recess having proved too small to receive an altarpiece which had been presented by the Duke of Bedford, the main axis of the church was, as it were, turned through an angle of 90°, and it is now arranged almost North and South, the original chancel being represented by a baptistery[488]. Other churches which do not conform to the usual plan are St Edmund the King, Lombard Street, and Immanuel church, Streatham Common (altar at Western end). A number of French examples might also be given, but even were it possible to compile an exhaustive list, it would only weary the reader.