This church, which, like its successor
until the Reformation, was served by monks, stood till the year 1093,
when it was destroyed as useless, for the new Norman church of Bishop
Walkelin begun in 1079 was then far enough advanced to be used. It is
thus practically certain that the two churches did not stand on the
same site, the newer, it would seem, rising to the south of the older
building. But the sacred spot which, it would seem, every church, that
may ever have stood in this place, must have covered is the holy well,
immediately beneath the present high altar in the crypt of the Norman
building. This surely was within the Saxon building as it must have
been within any church that may have stood here in Roman times?
The two great shrines of the Saxon church were, however, those of St
Birinus, the Apostle of Wessex, and of St Swithin, Bishop of Winchester
in the ninth century, the day of whose translation, July 15th, was,
till the Reformation, a universal festival throughout England. In his
honour the Saxon church, till then known as the church of SS. Peter and
Paul, was rededicated in 964.
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