The pilgrimage to discriminate the styles of Anglo-Saxon architecture on which Dr Harold Taylor embarked with his late wife Joan some fifty years ago was brought to a majestic conclusion in 1978 by the publication of the third volume of Anglo-Saxon Architecture (hereafter AS Arch), the first two volumes of which appeared in 1965. It is a work in the mainstream of English antiquarianism, reaching back to the days of Camden, Aubrey, Stukeley and Horsley, and is to be compared in our own time only with Pevsner's The Buildings of England.

The immediate answer to the question posed in the title is given with characteristic dry clarity by James Murray in that great work of English history the Oxford English Dictionary. Murray's first definition is “English Saxon, Saxon of England: orig. a collective name for the Saxons of Britain as distinct from the ‘Old Saxons’ of the continent. Hence, properly applied to the Saxons (or Wessex, Essex, Middlesex, Sussex, and perhaps Kent), as distinct from the Angles.” After explaining that, “in this Dictionary, the language of England before 1100 is called, as a whole, ‘Old English,’”Murray then goes on to say that the adjective “Anglo-Saxon” is “extended to the entire Old English people and language before the Norman Conquest.” Neither he nor the Supplement mentions explicitly the almost purely chronological use of “Anglo-Saxon” to describe the whole period of English history between 400 and 1066 that is now current, but it is easy to see how this has derived from the usage they expound.

What the original edition goes on to do, moreover, is to give an account of a wider use of the word that beautifully encapsulates the beliefs about culture and descent that lie behind it. The expression “Anglo-Saxon,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, was then—that is, in the late nineteenth century—used “rhetorically for English in its wider or ethnological sense, in order to avoid the later historical restriction of ‘English’ as distinct from Scotch, or the modern political restriction of ‘English’ as opposed to American of the United States; thus applied to (1) all persons of Teutonic descent (or who reckon themselves such) in Britain, whether of English, Scotch, or Irish birth; (2) all of this descent in the world, whether subjects of Great Britain or of the United States.”

Since a countless multitude of misshapen spirits, far and wide, was being tortured in this alternation of misery as far as I could see and without any interval of respite, I began to think that this might be Hell, of whose intolerable torments I had often heard tell. But my guide who went before me answered my thoughts, ‘Do not believe it,’ he said, ‘this is not Hell as you think.’ … As he led me on in open light … [we came to] a very broad and pleasant plain … [where] there were innumerable bands of men in white robes, and many companies of happy people sat around; as he led me through the midst of the troops of joyful inhabitants, I began to think that this might perhaps be the kingdom of Heaven of which I had often heard tell. But he answered my thoughts: ‘No,’ he said, ‘this is not the kingdom of Heaven as you imagine.’