Eric Cockain examines from an architectural perspective, his belief that the Priory Church in Christchurch, Dorset contains an earlier Saxon Church that was built on this site.

The Priory Church in Christchurch is pre-eminent. Its cathedral-like stature is not the result of a sudden, bold endeavour but rather the conglomeration of inspired building maintaining momentum over 1,100 years. Saxon Christians, toiling in the first years of 10th century A.D., constructed their magnificent church, which we shall call Christ's Church, uniquely, upon three cleverly spaced, chapel-sized-crypts.

This church should have remained unspoiled but its singularity took the eye of a conquering Norman, Ranulf Flambard, who also commissioned work on Durham Cathedral, a church built from foundation upwards in a few years at the end of the 1000s A.D.   Flambard started the ennoblement of the already fine Christ's Church in the 1080s. Extensive evidence of Saxon workmanship has never been recorded because the building the Saxons laid out, which has subsequently been added to over the centuries, has always been such a profound pleasure to visit, worship and pray within that its patchwork of building styles has never shown itself as a mystery to be solved. 

Flambard was also a mean man who knew to the least coinage the costs of building. Without a substantial building the community and its purpose could not continue, so rather than destroying the church, I believe Flambard built upon it, extending it upwards, adding a first floor chapel on both transept extremes, accomplishing his ambition piecemeal as the funds became available, diverted by him away from the proper recipients, the Canons.

© Eric Cockain 2008

ISBN 9781897887653