christchurch priory

The Christchurch Priory Through 900 Years Saxon and Norman: 7th Century AD to 12th Century The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles record that in 634AD Birinus, a missionary priest sent by Pope Honorius landed in Britain and in 635 baptised King Cynegils of Wessex. It was thought that he might have founded a Saxon Priory at Thuinam as a base for his work in this area, as part of the Pope's general plan to re-introduce christianity to Britain.

Christchurch Priory(Thuinam near a fine harbour and at the confluence of the Rivers Avon and Stour would, in those times, have provided sea communications as well as access to an extensive hinterland by the two rivers, which in the case of the Avon was navigable as far inland as Salisbury).

There is no specific evidence for this, however, but it is reasonably certain that there would have been a church here in the 9th century when Thuinam was sufficiently important to be included in King Alfred's list of fortified boroughs. The Domesday Survey of 1086 records that there was a Priory of 24 secular canons here in the reign of King Edward the Confessor (1042-1066).

In 1094 Ranulf Flambard, a chief minister of King William II (Rufus) began the building of a Norman church on the site of the old Saxon Priory. A paragraph in the Christchurch Cartulary (1312-1372) states: 'Flambard (the Norman founder of the present Church) destroyed the primitive church of that place and nine others that had been standing below the cemetery. The nine others probably referred to nine individual monastic cells grouped around the main building.

In 1099 Flambard was appointed Bishop of Durham, but work continued under his successors in the office of Dean of Thuinam Priory, and by about 1150 it would have comprised a basic Norman cruciform church namely a nave (up to Triforium level) with its north and south aisles; probably a central tower; and an apsidal-ended quire extending eastwards from the crossing at the nave to about as far as the sanctuary steps in the present quire.

During this period of the 12th century it is probable that the legend of the Miraculous Beam originated, a legend which changed the name of the town from the Saxon Thuinam to the present day Christchurch.