REMAINS OF THE 
PRE-NORMAN PERIOD 
N the long period of nearly seven centuries between the leaving of 
the Romans and the settlement of the Normans, Cumberland was 
the home of three successive ruling races. For the first two and 
a half centuries the Romano-Britons, Cymru, or Cumbri held the 
land ; but though they gave it their name (Cumbra-land) and continued 
to form a great part of the population after they had lost their power, 
we have but scanty records of their history as a people, and very few 
relics of the age of their independence. About 670-80 the Angles of 
Northumbria overcame them and settled among them, remaining the 
dominant race for a little over two centuries ; their history is almost as 
scanty, but we have some tokens of their arts and industries to show. 
In 876 the Danes burnt Carlisle, and for more than two centuries follow- 
ing they and a mixed multitude of Celto-Scandinavians, Vikings from 
Ireland and the Isles, continued to settle in Cumberland as masters of the 
soil, they too leaving us little in written history, but not a few works of 
art showing their presence and influence. 
The remains of the whole post-Roman, pre-Norman age fall into 
three classes—sculptured stones with their inscriptions, metal-work, and 
earthworks or ruins of rude building hardly to be reckoned as architec- 
ture. The few pieces of architecture which have sometimes been ascribed 
to ‘Saxon times’ will be noticed later on in the course of this work ; 
but even at a period when there was probably no true building in 
stone—when the forts were stockades and the churches and dwelling- 
houses were built of wood or wattle-and-daub— it was the custom to set 
up carved stones as memorials of the dead. The art of carving in stone 
lingered on in Britain from the Roman age, sometimes falling into great 
debasement, but more than once reviving under foreign influence. It 
seems to have been kept alive during this period and in this part of the 
country entirely for the purpose of grave-monuments, and it implied no 
skill in architecture or literature ; it was a traditional art by itself, 
influenced perhaps by metal-working and wood-carving, and to a small 
extent possibly by the ornament of illuminated manuscripts, but only as 
it reflected current fashions in decorative design. For that reason the 
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