A village in Co.Durham which contains one of the most complete upstanding Anglo-Saxon churches in England, the small chapel of St John. A simple double-celled building, its square-ended chancel has a tall narrow chancel arch with jambs formed of monolithic blocks laid in ‘long and short’ style that have given their name to the term ‘Escomb fashion’. The church, which dates from the early to mid-8th century, has several early constructional features such as roughly coursed masonry (including a great many reused Roman stones), side alternate quoining, and round-headed, single-splayed windows. Excavations here have shown that at one stage in its history Escomb had a pair of flanking side chapels or porticos, and that the windows were glazed from an early stage.
The Macmillan dictionary of archaeology, Ruth D. Whitehouse, 1983Copied