When industrial-scale production of ceramics came to an end in Britain in the 5th century, people quickly and readily reverted to the use of organic materials for their domestic needs. (Indeed, the almost overnight abandonment of Roman metal and pottery suggests that use of wood, leather, and vegetable fibres had never ceased, and must have continued side by side with the use of Roman materials.)
Timber was also the material of choice for buildings, including the earliest churches. Wood was used for the construction of all three pre-Conquest churches in Norwich – under the north-east bailey of the castle, under the main bailey, and beneath St Martin-at-Palace church. The same is true of the churches excavated in Thetford, Brandon, and Great Ryburgh. In every case, the evidence consisted of post-holes or trenches for wall plates cut into the subsoil.
Stephen Heywood (Stone Building in Romanesque East Anglia, 2013) argues that there were no stone churches in the region until 1020, when Cnut paid for the clay walls of the monastery of St Benet, at Holme, to be replaced with masonry. Peter Wade-Martins believes that one other exception in Norfolk is the ruined church at North Elmham, which he excavated from 1967 to 1972, and that he interprets as the site of the late 10th-century cathedral, built before the bishop’s seat was moved to Thetford (in 1071) and then to Norwich (1094).
A century of Tutankhamun