The Sun, the Route, and Timing

I started this investigation because of my experience of playing the pageant of Doomsday in 1988 along part of the original route in York in the fading light of evening, and the apparent necessity for some form of artificial lighting – for which there is no evidence in the records. It widened, almost inevitably, to take in other pageants which called more conspicuously for lighting effects which, it seemed, must have depended on the manipulation of sunlight. Doomsday, and the plays which immediately precede it, do not depend thematically on the revelation of a great light. The sunlight, and its potential reflection, is used to create an impression of the continuous radiance of God, and by extension, of heaven. But the time of day at which these pageants would have set out makes even this increasingly vulnerable as the day draws to a close. The elevation and angle at which the sun would have struck the waggon at any given point on the route is possibly more crucial here than in the earlier pageants where it was high in the sky. I decided to work out whether our experience was the same as theirs would have been in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

However, mapping the position of the sun inevitably involved working out where it is for the whole day, not just the late afternoon. I also had a natural interest in where it would be for the other pageants I have talked about. This led to a more comprehensive overview of the day's activities, which in its turn led to an unexpected excursus into timekeeping in medieval York, for reasons which will become apparent.

There are tables on the Web which list exactly when and at what angle the sun rises and sets on every day of the year, in York as well as in London, and how it travels across the sky during the day. In order to use these for the fifteenth century you have to make certain obvious adjustments.

Timing

First, you must remove British Summer Time and go back to Greenwich Mean Time.