Around the monasteries stretched their well-tilled lands, mostly reclaimed from fen or forest, and probably more scientifically cultivated than those of the neighbouring manors.

Most of the monks were skilled in civilised handicrafts, introduced from the more cultivated continent.

They were excellent ecclesiastical metalworkers; many of them were architects, who built in rude imitation of Romanesque models; and others were designers or illuminators of manuscripts.

The books and charters of this age are delicately and minutely wrought out, though not with all the artistic elaboration of later mediaeval work.

The art of painting (almost always in miniature) was considerably advanced, the figures being well drawn, in rather stiff but not unlifelike attitudes, though perspective is very imperfectly understood, and hardly ever attempted.