"LONG-AND-SHORT" WORK both show "Long-and-Short" work. But the more closely the churches mentioned are examined, the more clear it becomes that, though the dates of the building, when we can get at them, mostly point us to the eleventh century, the art is of a pre-Conquest type, and could only have been executed before the general spread of Norman influence which that century witnessed. We are therefore quite justified in speaking of this work as Saxon.
Here, perhaps, the term "Long-and-Short" work should be explained.
It is often said that the Saxon architecture was the development in stone of the building which had previously been done in timber and wattle, and thus in Barnack, and Barton, and at Stow, but nowhere else in Lincolnshire, parallel strips of stone run up the tower at intervals of a couple of feet, as if representing the upright timbers. This theory, perhaps, will not bear pressing; still, though the arch over a window is often triangular, made by leaning two slabs one against another, not unfrequently a square-ended stone projects from the top of a rounded arch, which seems to be a reminiscence in stone of the end of a wooden beam. This may be seen at Barnack on the south side of the tower. The towers have no buttresses, and though the stones between the upright strips are small and rubbley, the stones at the angles of the tower are fairly large and squared. When these are long-shaped, but set alternately perpendicular and horizontal, this is called "Long-and-Short" work, and is definitely "Saxon," even though built by Norman hands. The herring-bone work, as seen at Marton, is Romanesque and a sign of Norman builders. They also copied the Romans in facing a rubble core with dressed stone, whereas the Saxons only used dressed stones at the angles.
The enormous activity of the Norman builders in every part of the kingdom has thrown previous architectural efforts into the shade; but the Normans found in England a by no means barbarous people. Anglo-Saxon or Anglian art had exhibited developments in many directions, in metal work and jewellery, in illumination of MSS., in needlework, in stone-carving, as well as in architecture; and when Augustine landed in 597 it was not to a nation of barbarous savages, but to people quite equal in many ways to those he had lived
