ANGLO-SAXON

THERE can be no doubt that Christianity found its way into Britain early during the Roman occupation, but was suppressed through the violent persecutions by the Pagan tribes who ruled following the Roman departure A.D. 410, to be revived and further developed after the mission of St. Augustine, A.D. 597, from Rome to the Anglo-Saxons, who occupied Britain between the fifth and eleventh centuries.

The church of Greenstead, in Essex, is one of the most ancient in the country, and was built by Anglo-Saxons. Its walls are of substantial logs of timber placed upright upon a foundation of rude stonework. This method appears to be a survival of their method of building their dwellings.

Of stone buildings, the church tower of Barton-on-Humber (Plate II., Fig. 6) is a good example of Anglo-Saxon work. In it the external angles of the tower and of the door and window openings have their quoins (corner stones) of “long-and-short” work, the name applied to Saxon masonry of this kind, in which long stones are placed on end with short stones laid flat, suggesting their origin to be the work of carpenters who would place timbers in such positions, contrasted with that of masons, who would place all stones horizontally or at right-angles to pressure.

In this example and the very fine one at Earls Barton, Northamptonshire, this “long-and-short” work is carried over the exterior of the wall as a kind of surface decoration.

Plate II., Fig. 3, shows the present-day manner of framing timbers in a partition with sill (s.), posts or studs (p.), lintel (l.), inclined struts, and corbel-blocks (c.b.).

Saxon timber framing would be on similar lines, and this manner was perpetuated traditionally in their stone walls. The practice of imitating woodwork in stone and vice versa is one to be found in the works of all ages from remote antiquity. The heads of Saxon door and window openings were either semicircular (Plate II., Figs. 7, 8, and 9) or formed by placing two stones inclined to each other thus—?, and a short column or rude baluster was sometimes placed between two windows.

[Note.—The window over the clock face (Plate II., Fig. 6) is an insertion of a later period.]

The interesting little church at Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire, shows the same manner of building (Plate II., Fig. 1).

Anglo-Saxon bell-towers appear to have been generally covered with a roof of the form shown in Plate II., Fig. 5, as at Sompting, Sussex.