Thus, at Barton-on-Humber, we have two different types of Saxon work—that very peculiar form, with its tendency to panel decoration with strip-framing, which produces its highest decorative effect at Earl’s Barton, side by side with a more staid, less fantastic manner of building, which is without architectural ambition, uses decoration very sparingly, but can achieve very pleasant effects of proportion within its modest limits. This second style, as it may be called, is emphatically the style favoured by Lincolnshire builders. Of the first style, Barton-on-Humber is the only really conspicuous example in the county.[38] Strip-work decorations, not uncommon in the Saxon work of the South Midlands and South of England, of Mercia and Wessex, is quite the exception within the belt of Danish influence. It appears here and there as a kind of frame to arches and their jambs, or to the heads of window-openings. The best examples of its use in this connection anywhere in England are to be found in the jambs of the noble tower arches at Stow, where a semicircular shaft is carried down the face of the wall close to the angle of the jambs, and is accompanied by a flat strip of stone at a few inches distance. Both shaft and strip are finished off by rough corbels a little above the floor level.[39] But Stow is an exceptional church. As a rule, we find the strip-frame retained purely as a flat hood-mould to doorways and windows, without a trace of that individuality of style which distinguishes it at Stow, and preserving a still more distant kinship to the work at Barton. “Long-and-short” work pursues a more hardy existence. Quoining was necessary, and the “long-and-short” method was at once serviceable and fairly ornamental. So, while strip-work, a merely decorative arrangement of pilasters without constructive use, went its way, “long-and-short” quoining remained. We come across it chiefly at the angles of naves, which in several cases have been left almost untouched, when aisles of a later date have been added. St. Mary-le-Wigford and St. Peter-at-Gowts at Lincoln are cases in point. Bracebridge is an excellent example, for here all four angles of the nave can be traced. Cranwell, near Sleaford, and Ropsley, near Grantham, are other unmistakable instances. But here we must beware. The critic is too common who, assuming that a piece of wall is Saxon in character, immediately jumps to the conclusion that its quoining must be “long-and-short.” If the quoins are not arranged in a regular series of pieces alternately vertical and horizontal, then the work is not “long-and-short” work. If one or two stones thus arranged occur in the middle of irregular or of the common “small-stone” quoining, we are not justified in speaking of the fabric as showing “long-and-short” work. If the quoining shows a merely rough general resemblance to the “long-and-short” arrangement, it is not “long-and-short” work, but work of a quite haphazard type.