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Anglo-Saxon carpentry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Cecil A. Hewett
Cecil A. Hewett
Affiliation:
Essex County Planning Department, Chelmsford
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Extract

During the last century there were vigorous arguments between architectural historians about whether any buildings had survived from before the Norman Conquest. Although as early as 1817 Thomas Rickman had given reasoned proof that at least a few stone buildings had survived, many writers followed John Henry Parker in maintaining that the Anglo-Saxons built only in wood and that all their buildings had vanished. But by the end of the century careful study had established over a hundred stone churches with features which could be claimed as Anglo-Saxon, and Baldwin Brown listed 182 in the first edition of his masterly treatise in 1903 and 238 in the second edition of 1925. In spite of more than a century's study of these churches, it still remains difficult to give precise dates to more than a few; in the great majority of cases it can be asserted only that they were built before the Norman Conquest and in some others only that their builders had not yet adopted the Norman style.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 7 , December 1978 , pp. 205 - 229
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

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References

page 205 note 1 Rickman, T., An Attempt to Discriminate the Styles of Architecture in England (Liverpool, 1817), pp. 45–6.Google Scholar

page 205 note 2 See Atkinson, G., ‘Saxon Churches: Stone or Wood?’, Gentleman's Mag. 1863, 75 5–62Google Scholar, in answer to Parker's proposition that there were very few, if any, Anglo-Saxon churches built in stone before 1000.

page 205 note 3 Brown, G. Baldwin, The Arts in Early England 11, Anglo-Saxon Architecture (London, 1905; 2nd ed. 1925).Google Scholar

page 206 note 1 Cf. Harvey, J. H., The Master Builders (London, 1971), p. 21.Google Scholar

page 206 note 2 Hewett, C. A., Church Carpentry (London and Chichester, 1974), p. 10Google Scholar and fig. 3.

page 206 note 3 An Inventory of Historical Monuments in the County of Essex 11 (Royal Commission on Historical Monuments, 1926), 51 and 52.Google Scholar

page 206 note 4 See below, p. 225.

page 206 note 5 Rahtz, P. and Sheridan, K., ‘A Saxon Watermill in Bolebridge St, Tamworth’, Trans. of the South Staffordshire Archaeol. and Hist. Soc. 15 (1971–1972), 9–16.Google Scholar

page 206 note 6 Ibid. p. 16.

page 206 note 7 H. M., and Taylor, Joan, Anglo-Saxon Architecture (Cambridge, 1965), p. 37Google Scholar. My thanks are due to Dr H. M. Taylor for advice on the main fabric of the churches I refer to in this article and on the reliability of currently accepted opinions about their dates.

page 207 note 1 See below, pp. 209–10.

page 207 note 2 See below, p. 211.

page 207 note 3 Brown, Baldwin, Arts 11, 447Google Scholar, and Taylor, and Taylor, , Architecture, pp. 145–5.Google Scholar

page 207 note 4 The drawings illustrating this article are by the author.

page 208 note 1 See below, p. 216.

page 208 note 2 Brown, Baldwin, Arts 11, 449Google Scholar, and Taylor, and Taylor, , Architecture, pp. 162–4.Google Scholar

page 209 note 1 Brown, Baldwin, Arts 11, 452–3Google Scholar, and Taylor, and Taylor, , Architecture, pp. 222–6.Google Scholar

page 210 note 1 Brown, Baldwin (Arts 11, 312Google Scholar) assigned it to the Normans; the Taylors (Architecture, pp. 231–3) preferred a mid-Saxon date, but later investigations do not support this.

page 210 note 2 E.g. by Pevsner, N.(Buildings of England: Suffolk (Harmondsworth, 1961), p. 198).Google Scholar

page 210 note 3 See Taylor, and Taylor, , Architecture, pp. 262–3Google Scholar, where reference is given to the earliest mention of the tradition about St Edmund.

page 211 note 1 Rodwell, Warwick, ‘The Archaeological Investigation of Hadstock Church, Essex: an Interim Report’, AntJ 56(1976), 55–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 211 note 2 Complete single timbers, each pierced with an opening for the window, have been found at Barton-on-Humber, Lincolnshire (St Peter), Deerhurst, Gloucestershire (Odda's chapel), Framingham Earl, Norfolk (St Andrew) and Witley, Surrey (All Saints); for drawings of the last, see Taylor, and Taylor, , Architecture, pp. 676–7.Google Scholar There are also fragments at Tredington, Warwickshire (St Gregory), but they are no longer in situ.

page 214 note 1 See Baldwin, Brown, Arts II, 340–1Google Scholar, for Norman details, especially ‘Norman-like billet ornament’ on the string-course above the first story; but see Taylor, and Taylor, , Architecture, p. 561Google Scholar, for a more accurate description which had been appreciated by Rickman.

page 216 note 1 See above, pp. 207–8.

page 216 note 2 The method of assembling the spire will be best understood if the reader refers to the drawings of its structural features (figs. 20–5) in conjunction with fig. 16.

page 227 note 1 For a note on the use of drilled holes in stone window-frames for supporting basket-work frames for circular windows at Avebury, Wiltshire (St James), see Taylor, and Taylor, , Architecture, p. 33Google Scholar, and for basket-work window-frames still in situ at Hales, Norfolk (St Margaret), see Ibid. pp. 278–9 and fig. 483.

page 229 note 1 I am indebted to Mrs B. Hutton for information and sketches.