Christchurch stands in the angle where the rivers Avon and Stour meet,
and it is thus secured upon the north, east, and south; its great and
perhaps its only attraction is the great Priory church in whose name
that of the town, Twyneham, has long been lost; but there are beside a
ruined Norman house, and a pretty mediaeval bridge over the Avon, from
which a most noble view of the great church may be had. This, which
dates in its foundation from long before the Conquest, is to-day a
great cruciform building consisting roughly of Norman nave and
transepts, the nave buttressed on the north in the thirteenth century,
fifteenth-century chancel and western tower, and thirteenth-century
north porch--altogether one of the most glorious churches left to us
in England.
Its history, as I say, goes back far beyond the Conquest, when it was
served by secular canons, as it was at the time of the Domesday Survey,
when we find that twenty-four were in residence. But in the time of
William Rufus, Ranulph Flambard, the Bishop of Durham, his chief
minister, obtained a grant of the church and town of Christchurch, and
soon had suppressed all the canonries save five, and would have
suppressed them all but for the timely death of the Red King, which
involved the fall and imprisonment of his rascal minister.
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