Crowland gathered round the cell of Guthlac in the midst of a desolate mere.
Evesham occupied a glade in the wild forests of the western march.
Glastonbury, an old Welsh foundation, stood on a solitary islet, where the abrupt knoll of the Tor looks down upon the broad waste of the Somersetshire marshes.

Beverley, as its name imports, had been a haunt of beavers before the monks began to till its fruitful dingles.

In every case agriculture soon turned the wild lands into orchards and cornfields, or drove drains through the fens which converted their marshes into meadows and pastures for the long-horned English cattle.
Roman architecture, too, came with the Roman church.

We hear nothing before of stone buildings; but Eadwine erected a church of stone at York, under the direction of Paulinus; and Bishop Wilfrith, a generation later, restored and decorated it, covering the roof with lead and filling the windows with panes of glass.

Masons had already been settled in Kent, though Benedict, the founder of Wearmouth and Jarrow, found it desirable to bring over others from the Franks.