thelstan is
said to have founded the first monastery. More certain is it that, in
the reign of Edward the Confessor, the church at Twynham was held by
Secular Canons, who remained there until 1150, when they were displaced
by Augustinians, or Austin Canons. The early church was pulled down by
Ralf Flambard, afterwards Bishop of Durham. He was the builder of the
fine Norman nave of Christchurch, and the still grander nave of Durham
Cathedral. He was Chaplain to William Rufus, and his life was as evil
and immoral as his skill in building was great. He died in 1128, and was
buried in his great northern cathedral. Much of Flambard's Norman work
at Christchurch remains in the triforium, the arcading of the nave, and
the transepts. A little later we get the nave clerestory, Early English
work, put up soon after the dawn of the thirteenth century, the
approximate date also of the nave aisle vaulting, the north porch, and a
chapel attached to the north transept. To the fourteenth century belong
the massive stone rood-screen, and the reredos. The Perpendicular Lady
Chapel was finished about the close of the thirteenth century, while the
fourteenth century gave us the western tower, and most of the choir,
although the vaulting was put up much later, as the bosses of the south
choir aisle bear the initials W. E., indicating William Eyre, Prior from
1502 to 1520. Last of all in architectural chronology come the chantry
of Prior Draper, built in 1529, and that of Margaret, Countess of
Salisbury, niece of Edward IV, and mother of the famous Cardinal Pole.
She was not destined, however, to lie here, as she was beheaded at the
Tower in 1541.

The church now consists of nave, aisles, choir, unaisled transepts,
western tower, and Lady Chapel. The cloisters and the domestic buildings
have disappeared. It is highly probable that there was once a central
tower, an almost invariable accompaniment of a Norman conventual church.
There is no documentary evidence relating to a central tower, but the
massive piers and arches at the corners of the transepts seem to
indicate that provision was made for one, and the representation of a
tower of two stages on an old Priory seal, may be either the record of
an actual structure, or an intelligent anticipation of a feature that
never took an architectural form, although it was contemplated.

In the churchyard are tombstones to the memory of some of the passengers
lost in the wreck of the _Halsewell_, o