e Roman Wall. It actually stands
over its north-west corner."

"Even under Aldred's auspices the monastery did not altogether flourish.
But this time it was through the fault of Aldred himself, for, on his
translation to York in 1060, he retained very many of the possessions of
the abbey that had been pledged to him on account of his expenses in
repairing and re-edifying the church."

In 1072, Wilstan (Wulstan), the Abbot consecrated by Aldred in 1058,
died, and was succeeded by Serlo, who found the convent reduced to two
monks and eight novices. Through his energy the monastery increased to
such an extent that in about fifteen years' time it became necessary to
rebuild the monastery.

This rebuilding was begun exactly thirty-one years after Aldred had
built his church, _de nova_ and _a fundamentis_. Why was this necessary?
Professor Freeman says: "The reason is not very far to seek for any one
who has really mastered the history of architecture during the eleventh
century.... The simple fact is that the Norman prelates pulled down and
rebuilt the English churches, mainly because they thought them too
small." Further on he says: "This proves that, of the two types of
church which were in use side by side in the days of the Confessor,
Aldred had followed the older type. He had not conformed to the new
Norman fashions, vast size among them, which were coming in after the
example of the king's own church at Westminster.... His church was built
in the Primitive Romanesque style, the style common to England, with
Germany, Italy, and Burgundy, not in the newly-developed style of
Northern Gaul. Therefore, neither its scale nor its style suited the
ideas of Abbot Serlo.[2] It was condemned, and the minster that now
stands was begun."

In the MS. Lives of the Abbots in Queen's College Library, Oxford, it is
stated that "in A.D. 1089, on the day of the festival of the Apostles
Peter and Paul, in this year were laid the foundations of the church
(ecclesia) of Gloucester, the venerable man Robert, Bishop of Hereford,
laying the first stone, Serlo the Abbot being in charge of the work."
(So, too, Hart, i. 11.)

In August 1089 there was an earthquake, which did serious damage to the
then existing building. Eleven years after this (1100), in the last year
of the reign of William Rufus, "the church," as Florence of Worcester
wrote, "which Abbot Serlo, of revered memory, had built from the
foundations at Gloucester, was dedicated