He did this on a great scale, providing
accommodation for three times the number of monks that had served the
Cathedral in the decadent days of the Saxon monarchy, and when this was
done he first "destroyed utterly" the Romano-Saxon church and then "set
about erecting a more noble one, and in the space of seven years, 1070-
1077, he raised this from the foundations and brought it near to
perfection." That he worked in great haste and too quickly seems
certain. In fact it must be confessed that Lanfranc's church in
Canterbury was a more or less exact copy of his church of St Stephen at
Caen, but, built much more quickly, was too mean for its purpose. It
soon became necessary to rebuild the choir and sanctuary; the nave,
however, was allowed to stand until the end of the fourteenth century;
but even then its design so hampered the builders of the present nave,
for it had been decided to preserve one of Lanfranc's western towers,
that to this day the nave of Canterbury is too short, consisting of
but eight bays.
Lanfranc's choir was of but two bays and an apse. This was too
obviously inadequate to be tolerated by the monks.
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