DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.6911#0110
78
ARCHITECTURAL ANTIQUITIES.
establishment of the Normans, about the middle of the eleventh century, we
cannot expect to meet with the remains, or even satisfactory accounts, of private
buildings, which displayed any thing entitled to the name of architecture.
Temporary huts, sheds, and tents within entrenchments, appear to have been the
prevailing dwellings of these warriors : at least till the reign of the great and good
Alfred, who, being liberal and enlightened himself, gradually inspired his associates
more immediately, and his subjects generally, with corresponding sentiments.
An ancient author who wrote in the year 560, and who was enabled to appre-
ciate the manners of his contemporaries, has furnished us with a strongly marked
and well defined picture of desolated Britain, as it appeared at his time. " A fire
was kindled," according to Gildas, " by the sacrilegious hands of the Saxons,
which spread from city to city, and never ceased until it had burnt up the whole
surface of the island, from sea to sea, with its flaming tongue. The walls of all the
colonies were beat down to the ground with battering rams, and their inhabi-
tants slain with the point of the sword. Nothing was to be seen in the streets,
O horrible to relate ! but fragments of ruined towers, temples, and walls, fallen
from their lofty seats, besprinkled with blood, and mixed with mangled car-
cases." If this account be a little exaggerated, it serves to shew the general
state of the country, and character of the people, who ultimately obtained pos-
session of nearly the whole island, and substituted their own manners, customs,
and polity, in the place of those which the more refined Romans had bequeathed
to the aboriginal natives of Britain.
Before the Saxons visited this island, Mr. Turner observes, from the best
authorities, they lived in houses, and worshipped in temples. One of the latter, of
large dimensions, was destroyed by Charlemagne, in the eighth century. Their
language also contained some indigenous terms, concerning buildings, and parts
of buildings. Their word for window is ehthyrl, literally an eye-hole, and their
term for building was getimbrade, signifying constructed of wood. Olaus
Magnus* furnishes us with a brief account of the houses of the northern nations,
but does not define the periods when the different sorts were introduced, or
became prevalent. He divides them into five classes: " pyramidales, cuneatse,
arcuales, rotundse, et quadratai," the sides and roofs of all which were solely or
chiefly composed of timber; but walls of stone were sometimes combined with the
* Hist, de Gent. Sept. (Roma: 1555,) p. 409, &c.
ARCHITECTURAL ANTIQUITIES.
establishment of the Normans, about the middle of the eleventh century, we
cannot expect to meet with the remains, or even satisfactory accounts, of private
buildings, which displayed any thing entitled to the name of architecture.
Temporary huts, sheds, and tents within entrenchments, appear to have been the
prevailing dwellings of these warriors : at least till the reign of the great and good
Alfred, who, being liberal and enlightened himself, gradually inspired his associates
more immediately, and his subjects generally, with corresponding sentiments.
An ancient author who wrote in the year 560, and who was enabled to appre-
ciate the manners of his contemporaries, has furnished us with a strongly marked
and well defined picture of desolated Britain, as it appeared at his time. " A fire
was kindled," according to Gildas, " by the sacrilegious hands of the Saxons,
which spread from city to city, and never ceased until it had burnt up the whole
surface of the island, from sea to sea, with its flaming tongue. The walls of all the
colonies were beat down to the ground with battering rams, and their inhabi-
tants slain with the point of the sword. Nothing was to be seen in the streets,
O horrible to relate ! but fragments of ruined towers, temples, and walls, fallen
from their lofty seats, besprinkled with blood, and mixed with mangled car-
cases." If this account be a little exaggerated, it serves to shew the general
state of the country, and character of the people, who ultimately obtained pos-
session of nearly the whole island, and substituted their own manners, customs,
and polity, in the place of those which the more refined Romans had bequeathed
to the aboriginal natives of Britain.
Before the Saxons visited this island, Mr. Turner observes, from the best
authorities, they lived in houses, and worshipped in temples. One of the latter, of
large dimensions, was destroyed by Charlemagne, in the eighth century. Their
language also contained some indigenous terms, concerning buildings, and parts
of buildings. Their word for window is ehthyrl, literally an eye-hole, and their
term for building was getimbrade, signifying constructed of wood. Olaus
Magnus* furnishes us with a brief account of the houses of the northern nations,
but does not define the periods when the different sorts were introduced, or
became prevalent. He divides them into five classes: " pyramidales, cuneatse,
arcuales, rotundse, et quadratai," the sides and roofs of all which were solely or
chiefly composed of timber; but walls of stone were sometimes combined with the
* Hist, de Gent. Sept. (Roma: 1555,) p. 409, &c.