of the third Prior that the high altar of the new church begun by Gilbert and continued by Richard de Redvers and his priors was dedicated upon the feast of St Thomas of Canterbury, 1195.  This would seem to prove that the Norman choir was not finished until then; similar consecration of other altars would lead us to believe that perhaps the vault and the clerestory of the nave were completed in 1234.  At the same time the beautiful north porch was built and the north aisle was buttressed.  To the fourteenth century we owe the fine rood screen restored in 1848, but the next great period of building was the fifteenth century, when the Lady Chapel, with the chapels north and south of it, were built, and later in the same century the great choir was entirely re-erected.

Thus Christchurch Priory grew until the Reformation.  It escaped the first raid of Cromwell in 1536, but in spite of the petition of John Draper, the last Prior, in 1539 the house was demanded of him and he surrendered it.  The report of the vandals and sacrilegious persons who received it is worth copying, if only to show their character.  “We found,” they wrote, “the Prior a very honest, conformable person, and the house well furnished with jewels and plate, whereof some be meet for the king’s majesty in use as a little chalice of gold, a goodly large cross, double gilt with the foot garnished, and with stone and pearl; two goodly basons double gilt.  And there be other things of silver....  In thy church we find a chapel and monument curiously made of Caen stone, prepared by the late mother of Reginald Pole for her burial, which we have caused to be defaced, and all the arms and badges to be delete.”  It is consoling to note that one of the rascals that signed that report, Dr London, was shortly afterwards exposed in his true colours and openly put to penance for adultery before he died in prison, where he lay for perjury.

The report stated that the church was superfluous.  It was the only true word written there.  When a religion is destroyed, its temples are certainly superfluous.  However, there was a considerable influence brought to bear by the people of the neighbourhood, and the church itself was granted them for their use.  The Priory, which stood to the south of the church, was, of course, destroyed.

One might stand a whole month in that glorious building with this only regret, that it is in the hands of strangers.  The use to which it is put is not that for which it was intended, and half the delight of the place is thus lost to us.  But no one can pass down that great avenue of elms to the glorious north porch, a master-work of the thirteenth century, without rejoicing that when all is said the church was saved to us.  The great Norman nave, with its thirteenth-century clerestory, and alas, modern stucco vaulting, the Norman aisles and north transept, are too reverent for destruction, the fifteenth-century choir and eastern chapels too lovely.