Fig. 31 St Peter’s, Barton-upon-Humber. The tower and baptistery to its left date from just before 1000. The nave and porch to the right are late 13th-century. The Saxon tower was heightened in the later 11th century; before this date the tower was probably crowned by a timber spire very similar to that at Sompting (fig. 30).

      The most important phenomenon must have been the rise of the anonymous (to us) master builder or architect. The Anglo-Saxons used the Latin term architectus, not to describe an architect in the modern sense but to describe people with creative responsibility for a structure. Early buildings such as Wearmouth and Jarrow (pp 34–5) could be erected with minimum skill and engineering, but as buildings became more sophisticated masons, carvers and quarry owners became crucial and the designers had a much more onerous task. It would have been impossible to build great churches such as Winchester Cathedral, or even smaller ones such as St Mary’s, Sompting, without drawings and small-scale timber models. Drawings might have been on parchment, but equally they might have been etched into large areas of plaster floor expressly laid for the purpose. In the 9th century masonry components began to be cut at the quarry, and so templates must have been made and passed to and fro. Late Saxon builders were still heavily reliant on salvaged Roman stone. St Peter’s, Barton-upon-Humber (fig. 31), is typical in that its stone dressings were constructed using blocks of millstone grit possibly taken from the nearby Roman site at Winteringham or from further afield in York. The crypt at Hexham Abbey, Northumberland, contains carved Roman ashlars with inscriptions, and the nearby tower at St Andrew’s, Corbridge, contains a reset Roman arch. In towns the ruins of Rome were upstanding and visible, and at Winchester, for instance, provided most of the materials necessary to construct the cathedral. In the late Saxon period it is likely that there were well-organised salvage contractors, perhaps acting under royal licence, deconstructing Roman ruins and selling on the materials for reuse.

      Whilst masons were not numerous in early Saxon England, by 900 there must have been hundreds of craftsmen working in stone. The most skilled were re-cutting large Roman ashlars into window heads, balusters and quoins. Most, however, were little more than labourers. Given the relatively small number of stone buildings in Saxon England and the proximity of most to Roman ruins, the quarrying industry remained underdeveloped. Most Saxon quarries were merely shallow diggings producing huge quantities of rough rubble – the most common stone-walling material. Rubble walls could be built with a small number of technicians and a large number of unskilled labourers; such walls also relied on the skills of joiners rather than masons. Rubble was mixed with mortar and shovelled into timber shuttering; a third of the mix was mortar and this had to dry before another layer of rubble mix could be added on top. Sometimes levelling courses were put between layers of rubble, and these were often of Roman brick or tile, or perhaps herringbone masonry. Corners were now and then strengthened and straightened by stone quoins, this being known as long-and-short work. A church tower such as St Katherine’s, Little Bardfield, Essex, was entirely built of rubble in diminishing stages. Here not even the window openings had stone dressings.³²

      Most rubble walls were originally plastered inside and out, concealing the original construction method. This provided a canvas for surface decoration as seen at towers such as All Saints’, Earls Barton, or St Peter’s, Barton-upon-Humber (figs 29 and 31). This decoration, whilst imitating Roman arcades and pilasters, was easily applied and constructed using the principles of joinery. Even the baluster window openings at All Saints’ were conceived in the language of wood turning rather than masons’ work.³³ Thus the role of carpenters in construction was crucial. They built the shuttering for wall construction and scaffolding as the building rose, in addition to the roofs (many of which were covered in timber shingles), doors, windows, balconies, staircases and other internal fittings. Moreover, the decoration of these structures was imagined in the mind of a carpenter not a mason. Finally, it is vital to acknowledge the increasingly important role of the smith in construction. Smiths were highly valued, largely through their role of arming men in a military society. Yet buildings increasingly demanded both decorative ironwork and more functional bars, cramps and hinges.