The Antiquity Of Stone Buildings In England.

after the fall of Eome is not now generally accepted . I do not forget here the statements of some of the chroniclers as to the building and fortification of London . The old legend of Albanus takes us back to 286 , and as Lidgate tells us in his poem on St . Alban , in the British Museum , he had been to Rome , and lived

at Verulamium , and was High Steward of Britain . The old legends have appropriated him as a Grand Master , and allude to a grand assembly , and then make him out , not the Proto-Martyr , but the Proto-Master Builder and Proto-Grand Master in England ; and yet it seems , from some of the old chronicles , that there was an earlier civilization under Lucius ( if credible ) and Germanus , which seems to have come from Armorica to Wales . What parttooin the early movement

, , of the civilizing building art , the " Fraternitas Colideorum , " or Culdees , took is by no means clear . Very little is known of that mysterious band , though while some writers declare they came from Ierne ( Ireland ) , others assert that they came from the East , and from PhoBnicia , and were Christian Druids . They were , however , builders . Passing from Albanus and the Romans , we find

no recorded trace of building operations , though they must have gone on , until about the middle of the sixth century , when Oolumban is said to have built a Monastery in the Island of Hio , Columbkill , 563 ; and Augustine is said to have brought , in 597 , workmen and monks with him , who built a church at Canterbury , though a church built in the Roman times is said to hare been there when he arrived . In 627 we have again Paulinus at Yorkwith Roman artificers ; soon after

, , Wilfred and Benedict Biscop , Ceolfrid ; after him Dunstau , Swithin . It is distinctly stated of all these great builders that they brought workmen from Rome mainly , or from Gaul , to do "Romanum opus , " and Benedict Biscop ( called Bennet , abbot of Wirral , in our incorrect early writers and traditions ) and Wilfred are specially said by Bede and Eddius . to have introduced " glaziers and glazing" into England . King Alfred is said to have brought

artificers from Rome , and King Athelstan is said to have sent for foreign workmen , and Edward the Confessor , it is averred , brought them from various parts . William of Malmesbury makes a great distinction between the " novum oedificandi genus , " introduced by various workmen at the Conquest , and the older Anglo-Saxon work .

Of Wilfrid , Archbishop of York , it is repeatedly stated , alike b y Bede , Eddius , and Richard of Hexham , that he obtained " from Rome , Italy , and France , and from other countries , wherever he could find them , " " alios industries artifices , " and that , with the "assistance of nearly every art , " he "improved " all things . Benedictus Biscopius ( Benedict Biscop ) is said to have built the abbeys of Monmouth and Grrwi ( Yarrow ) , " Romano opere , Romano move" with "

arti-, ficers " he brought with him from Rome ; and Bede tells us how , in the eighth century , Naiton , King of the Picts , sent to Ceolfrid , abbot of Weremouth , the successor of Benedict , for architects to build a church in the Roman manner , " more Romano . " It has been far too hastily assumed by some writers that the Anglo-Saxon buildings were not mainly stone , "but rather of wood , which

theory is based on a mistaken reading of a passage in the so-called charter of Edgar to Malmesbury Abbey , often quoted , but which , in . truth , only refers to the roofs , not the body or walls of the churches . The famous poem of Alcuin ( Alcuinus ) , first published by Gale , describes the church at York , consecrated November 7 th , 780 , and is in itself a sufficient answer to the absurd controversy about stone and wooden churches in those early days .

Now , it is somewhat interesting to note and to realize that our gild legends , though with some unavoidable anachronisms and not-to-be-wondered-at mistakes , owing to the normal "lapsus traditionis , " seem to state , more or less correctly , in general outline , the historical facts of the building and building