Chapter XV: Later Saxon Times

1. Every old town and village has got its oldest house, of course. You will most likely have heard people trying to be funny about it, and saying they think it must have been built in the year One. There is, we may pretty safely say, no house now standing exactly as it was in the days of King Cnut and the later Saxon times. But even yet there are some buildings standing, and still in use, which have certain parts which were erected in those times. These buildings are mostly churches, and in various parts of the country, indeed in almost every county, something belonging to this age can be pointed out.

2. Churches built of stone in those days had very thick walls with very small windows. The east end of the chancel was usually semicircular, forming an _apse_. The wall between the chancel and the nave was pierced by a narrow, low, round-headed arch. Most of the windows had plain, round-headed arches, and in some of them, dividing the opening into two parts or "lights", were stone pillars with bulging stems. Some of the doorways had triangular heads, others had round heads. There are some very curious bits of sculpture over some of these doorways. The meaning of them was quite plain, no doubt, to the people who carved them, but they are very difficult for us to understand. They represent the ideas which the Saxons had of good and evil, and of the strife going on between them.

3. King Edward the Confessor had been brought up in Normandy, where church-building was in advance of anything in England. He encouraged Norman ideas in building, as well as in other directions, and so prepared the way for the coming of the Normans. Some parts of the buildings connected with Westminster Abbey were built at that time.

4. We do not know much of Saxon castles, though the Saxons had their strongholds and fortified places.

5. The houses in which the people lived were most of them in those days built of wood. There was not much difference, except in size, between the house of the king, the thane, and the villein. There was the hearth, on which was the fire; and the room or hall in which it was placed was the chief building, close to which, very gradually, other buildings arose. Apparently the buildings had a framework of timber, filled in with wood, wattled together like hurdles. In the more important buildings, stone gradually came into use.

6. The monasteries and convents each had the buildings in which the monks lived grouped round the church. After the Danish wars the buildings improved, stone taking the place of wood.

7. Even in the towns wood was chiefly used for the ordinary house; though, as we should expect, stone was used in the more important buildings, and in the wall round the town.

8. What we understand by comfort in a house was absent. There was the fire on the hearth in the middle of the floor; in this room the people of the house, from the highest to the lowest, had their meals; and there, on the floor, most of them slept at night. Cooking was almost entirely done in the open air.

=Summary.=--In most towns and villages the oldest building now in
use is usually the church. Some churches have remains of Saxon[5]
work in them. The style was very plain: the chancel usually
had an apse or semicircular end; the windows were round-headed
and sometimes had pillars with bulging shafts; doorways were
round-headed or triangular. King Edward the Confessor prepared
the way for Normans and Norman ways of building. The Saxons had
strongholds, but they were not castle-builders. Ordinary houses
were usually of wood, and consisted of a room or hall, with a
hearth in the middle; in this room the family slept. Most of the
cooking was done in the open air.