with the wooden hall of its lord occupying the centre of the homestead,
and with the huts of the churls and serfs among the hays and valleys of
the outskirts. The butter and cheese, bread and bacon, were made at
home; the corn was ground in the quern; the beer was brewed and the
honey collected by the family. The spinner and weaver, the shoemaker,
smith, and carpenter, were all parts of the household. Thus every manor
was wholly self-sufficing and self-sustaining, and towns were rendered
almost unnecessary.

Forests and heaths still also covered about half the surface. These were
now the hunting-grounds of the kings and nobles, while in the leys,
hursts, and dens, small groups of huts gave shelter to the swineherds
and woodwards who had charge of their lord's property in the woodlands.
The great tree-covered region of Selwood still divided Wessex into two
halves; the forest of the Chilterns still spread close to the walls of
London; the Peakland was still overgrown by an inaccessible thicket; and
the long central ridge between Yorkshire and Scotland was still shadowed
by primaeval oaks, pinewoods, and beeches. Agriculture continued to be
confined to the alluvial bottoms, and had nowhere as yet invaded the
uplands, or even the stiffer and drier lowland regions, such as the
Weald of Kent or the forests of Arden and Elmet.

Only two elements broke the monotony of these self-sufficing
agricultural communities. Those elements were the monasteries and the
towns.

A large part of the soil of England was owned by the monks. They now
possessed considerable buildings, with stone churches of some
pretensions, in which service was conducted with pomp and
impressiveness. The tiny chapel of St. Lawrence, at Bradford-on-Avon,
forms the best example of this primitive Romanesque architecture now
surviving in England. Around the monasteries stretched their well-tilled
lands, mostly reclaimed from fen or forest, and probably more
scientifically cultivated than those of the neighbouring manors. Most of
the monks were skilled in civilised handicrafts, introduced from the
more cultivated continent. They were excellent ecclesiastical
metalworkers; many of them were architects, who built in rude imitation
of Romanesque models; and others were designers or illuminators of
manuscripts. The books and charters of this age are delicately and
minutely wrought out, though not with all the artistic elaboration of
later mediaeval work. The art of