checkerwork, in architecture, masonry built of two materials, usually stone and flint or stone and brick, so arranged as to make a checkerboard pattern and to give variety in texture and colour. Stone and flint checkerwork is common in the parish churches and smaller houses of East Anglia, England; and both combinations were much used after the Reformation, when the suppressed monasteries were used as sources for building stone. Another East Anglian combination is that of brick and kidney-shaped cobbles or oval pebbles, producing a less sophisticated version of the checkerboard pattern.