s in
Great Britain, that can be proved to date from between the early 7th
century and 1066, but Pre-Conquest would be more strictly accurate,
Anglo-Saxon architects having contributed but little to the evolution of
style, for they were wanting in initiative, rarely trying experiments
with new features as was the constant custom of their Norman successors.
To this, however, there was one brilliant exception in Bishop Wilfrid of
York, who greatly improved the primitive church, built by King Edwin in
the capital of his see, that was later destroyed by fire, and erected
noble minsters at Hexham and Ripon, of which the fine crypts with
massive pillars still remain beneath the considerably later buildings.
In the south of England, too, there was considerable architectural
activity in the 7th and 8th centuries, whilst in the 9th the return of
King Egbert from his long exile at the Court of Charlemagne appears to
have led to the introduction in Wessex of the Oriental branch of the
Romanesque style to which the cathedral of Aix-la-Chapelle belongs.

[Illustration: Tower of Sompting Church, Sussex]

The chief characteristics of the so-called Anglo-Saxon style are the
great height in comparison with the length and breadth of a building, a
rectangular plan, massive square towers, unadorned angular or
semicircular arches, stunted clumsy-looking columns with roughly carved
or plain capitals, long narrow round-headed deeply recessed windows,
massive walls without internal decoration, with on the exterior a
somewhat ornate surface ornamentation, combined with a series of
peculiar clamps known as quoins at the angles of the walls, greatly
strengthening the structure. There were no aisles or transepts in early
Anglo-Saxon buildings, but the chancel was divided from the nave by an
arch sometimes with and sometimes without carving.

It is supposed that most of the early Anglo-Saxon churches were built of
wood, and at Greenstead in Essex an example remains of the mode in which
such buildings were constructed, though the probability is that none of
the original material remains. Of the stone buildings that succeeded
those in the more perishable material a few only are still in existence,
including the Abbey Church of Deerhurst near Towkesbury, the oldest
consecrated building still in use in England, the Tower of Earl's Barton
Church in Northamptonshire, parts of Barfreston Church, Kent, that has a
fine Norman doorway: Sompting Church, with