Examination of ten major churches of pre-Viking period in Anglo-Saxon England, from a linguistic as well as from an historical point of view. As a whole, the book provides an historical context for the development of Anglo-Saxon architecture in the seventh and eighth centuries. Evidence from Merovinigian and early Carolingian Gaul is also examined and the text of almost all the documentary evidence, together with the author's new translations, is given in the second part of the study.