Of the first Norman church which Bishop Gundulph built, very little remains, perhaps a part of the crypt, the nave, and the great fortress tower he built on the north side of the church.  This church was a very curious piece of Norman building.  It was a long aisled church, that was unbroken from end to end, but the choir-proper was shut off from its aisles by walls of stone as at St Albans.  There were no transepts or central tower, but two porches, one on the north and the other on the south, and in the angle formed by them with the choir, Gundulph built towers, one a belfry, the other a fortress detached from the church.  To the south of the nave stood the first monastery and it is there that we may still see fragments, five arches in all, of Gundulph’s nave.

It was Ernulph who built the second monastery to replace the probably wooden buildings of the first, to the south of the choir of which parts remain to us.  This done, he turned to the Cathedral and began entirely to rebuild it, recase it with Caen stone or to remodel what he left.  It is therefore twelfth century Norman work we see at Rochester.  All this work, however, some of it not twenty-five years old, was damaged in 1179 by fire, and once more the monks began to rebuild their church.  They seem to have begun on the north aisle of the choir, and then to have set to work on the south aisle.  Thence they proceeded to rebuild the eastern end of the church, erecting a transept beyond the old choir, finishing their new sanctuary in 1227.

The work did not stop there, however; by 1245 the north-west transept was finished, and by 1280 the south-west and the two eastern bays of the nave.  It is astonishing to find the monastery able to support such immense and extravagant operations, but we know that in 1201 the monks had successfully established a new shrine in their church, the shrine of St William.  This popular sanctuary was the tomb of a Scotch pilgrim from Perth who had been a baker.  “In charity he was so abundant that he gave to the poor the tenth loaf of his workmanship; in zeal so fervent that in vow he promised and in deed attempted, to visit the places where Christ was conversant on earth; in which journey he made Rochester his way, where, after he had rested two or three days, he departed towards Canterbury.  But ere he had gone far from the city, his servant—­a foundling who had been brought up by him out of charity—­led him of purpose out of the highway and spoiled him both of his money and his life.  The servant escaped, but his master, because he died in so holy a purpose of mind, was by the monks conveyed to St Andrews and laid in the choir.  And soon he wrought miracles plentifully.”

The enormous fame of St William and the popularity of his shrine, not only with those who were on the way to Canterbury, but with such as were merely travellers to the coast, lasted for nearly a hundred years, enriching the monks of Rochester.  By the end of the thirteenth century, however, this shrine of St William had been utterly eclipsed by the fame of the shrine of St Thomas.  For this reason, then, the monks of Rochester were happily never able to rebuild their nave, which remains a Norman work of the twelfth century.