Of the first Norman church which Bishop Gundulph built, very little
remains, perhaps a part of the crypt, the nave, and the great fortress
tower he built on the north side of the church. This church was a very
curious piece of Norman building. It was a long aisled church, that
was unbroken from end to end, but the choir-proper was shut off from
its aisles by walls of stone as at St Albans. There were no transepts
or central tower, but two porches, one on the north and the other on
the south, and in the angle formed by them with the choir, Gundulph
built towers, one a belfry, the other a fortress detached from the
church. To the south of the nave stood the first monastery and it is
there that we may still see fragments, five arches in all, of
Gundulph's nave.

It was Ernulph who built the second monastery to replace the probably
wooden buildings of the first, to the south of the choir of which
parts remain to us. This done, he turned to the Cathedral and began
entirely to rebuild it, recase it with Caen stone or to remodel what
he left. It is therefore twelfth century Norman work we see at
Rochester. All this work, however, some of it not twenty-five years
old, was damaged in 1179 by fire, and once more the monks began to
rebuild their church. They seem to have begun on the north aisle of
the choir, and then to have set to work on the south aisle. Thence
they proceeded to rebuild the eastern end of the church, erecting a
transept beyond the old choir, finishing their new sanctuary in 1227.

The work did not stop there, however; by 1245 the north-west transept
was finished, and by 1280 the south-west and the two eastern bays of
the nave. It is astonishing to find the monastery able to support such
immense and extravagant operations, but we know that in 1201 the monks