Bk. VI. Ch. II. SAXOX ARCHITECTURE. 125 CHAPTER II. SAXON ARCHITECTURE. SO few and indistinct care the traces of architectural art in England before the Norman Conquest, that for a long time it was a moot point among antiquaries Avhether or not any such thing existed as true Saxon architecture. The question may now be considered as settled in the affirmative. In his last edi- tion, Rickman enumerates tAventy churches in Avhich fragments are found which certainly belong to the pre-Norman period, though no com- plete example can be pointed to as illustrating the style then prevalent. Since Rickman's death ten or twelve more specimens have been discovered. Generally they are towers or crypts, as St. Winfred's at Ri])on, or the pillars of a chancel arch, as at Re- culver. Sometimes it is a doorway, at others only a piece of rude wall- ing. On the review of the whole, it is evident that architecture in Ensfland was certainlv ruder and less developed than that on the Continent at the same age, and differed from it in one curious pecu- liarity. Both were, of course, based on the Roman art which preceded them ; but the Saxon in its orna- ^ mentation showed a tendency to wooden forms, which we do not find in the others. In Lycia, in India, and Egypt, we are able to trace a wooden architecture gradually de- veloping itself into one of stone ; but here we can almost certainly detect a stone architecture becoming wooden from the two materials being constantly employed in juxtaposition, the meaner being gen- erally predominant. 563. Tower of Earl's Barton Church. (From Britton's " Architectural Antiquities.")
