Anglo-Saxon carpentry

During the last century there were vigorous arguments between architectural historians about whether any buildings had survived from before the Norman Conquest. Although as early as 1817 Thomas Rickman had given reasoned proof that at least a few stone buildings had survived, many writers followed John Henry Parker in maintaining that the Anglo-Saxons built only in wood and that all their buildings had vanished. But by the end of the century careful study had established over a hundred stone churches with features which could be claimed as Anglo-Saxon, and Baldwin Brown listed 182 in the first edition of his masterly treatise in 1903 and 238 in the second edition of 1925. In spite of more than a century's study of these churches, it still remains difficult to give precise dates to more than a few; in the great majority of cases it can be asserted only that they were built before the Norman Conquest and in some others only that their builders had not yet adopted the Norman style.