The many influences, British and foreign, which long had been, and still were, at work in the designing and making of furniture resulted in the Queen Anne period in the formation of what is called the English School of Furniture. During and after the mediaeval and Tudor periods England possessed a large body of very capable carpenters, joiners and carvers who helped to build, decorate and furnish our cathedrals, churches, castles and unfortified mansions. Their successors from the Restoration period onwards were able to adapt their talents to meet the quickly-growing demands throughout the country for mobile furniture of increasing variety, and especially the heavy demand in London after the Great Fire in 1666. They succeeded in absorbing and nationalizing the ideas and types derived from foreign countries and the antique, and so sure was the instinct which guided them that soon after the middle of the eighteenth century the English School was recognized as one of the chief schools of furniture design in Europe.