riginal church, but of that which is visible above
ground the oldest part was due to Flambard, of whom more hereafter.
When the first church was founded we cannot tell. Here, as in many other
places, the origin is lost in the haze of antiquity and legend. Here,
as at many other places, we find the original builders choosing one
site, and the stones that they had laid during the day being removed by
night by unseen, and therefore angelic, hands to another. It was on the
heights of St Catharine, about a mile and a half away from the present
site, that the human builders strove to raise their church. It may be
that this hill, still marked by the ramparts of an ancient encampment,
was not holy ground on account of its former occupation by heathens,
though in after time, a chapel, built in the early part of the
fourteenth century, existed there; but, anyhow, not on this hill, but on
the flat lands of Saxon Tweoxneham, a name which passed into the forms
of Thuinam and Twynham, that the great Priory Church was destined to
stand. But not even when the human builders began to erect the church
on the miraculously chosen ground did supernatural interposition cease.
A stranger workman came and laboured at the building: never was he seen
to eat as the other workmen did, never did he come with his fellows to
receive his wages. Once, when a beam had been cut too short for the
place it was to occupy, he lengthened it by drawing it out with his
hand; and when the day for consecration came, and the other workmen
gathered together to see their work hallowed by due ceremonial, this
stranger workman was nowhere to be seen. The ecclesiastics came to
the conclusion that this was none other than the carpenter's son of
Nazareth, and the church which had in part been builded by the hands
of the Christ Himself in later days became known as Christchurch.

But, if we disregard these legends, we do not at once find ourselves
on sure and certain ground. The foundation has been attributed to
AEthelstan, but this is hardly likely, as, in a charter dated 939, he
gives one of the weirs on the Avon at Twynham to the Abbey Church of
Middleton, now Milton Abbey in North Dorset, which he would be hardly
likely to do if he had founded, or were thinking of founding, a
religious house at Twynham; and as he died in 940, not much time was
left for any foundation after this grant. Again, we find King Eadred
granting land and fishing near Twineham to Dunstan. Howeve