Later Saxon Times
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.
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 continually
going on between them.
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.
We do not know much of Saxon castles, though the Saxons had their
strongholds and fortified places.
[Illustration: _Saxon Doorway, Earl's Barton, Northampton_]
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.
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.
Even in the towns wood was chiefly used for the ordinary houses;
though, as we should expect, stone was used in the more important
buildings and in the wall round the town.
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 done almost entirely in the open air.