Anglo-Saxon Architecture

Anglo-Saxon architecture is the building tradition of England from the mid 5th century, after the end of Roman rule, to the Norman Conquest of 1066. Secular buildings were typically rectangular timber structures with thatched roofs, a deliberate cultural choice rather than a technical limitation, while church building grew from simple single-room naves into more elaborate forms marked by pilaster strips, blank arcading, baluster shafts and triangular headed openings. Recognizable Anglo-Saxon details include long and short quoins at the corners of buildings, narrow round arched openings, herringbone stonework and west porches, and at least fifty English churches still retain major Anglo-Saxon fabric. All Saints Church at Earls Barton, Escomb Church in County Durham and the timber church of St Andrew at Greensted are among the clearest surviving examples, and the style moved gradually toward Romanesque forms in the decades before the Conquest.