The next event recorded in connection with our subject is the founding of a Benedictine monastery by Offa II., King of the Mercians, about the year 793 A.D. He searched for and found the coffin that contained the martyr's bones. This, as already stated, had been removed from the original church dedicated to his memory, in order to save it from destruction at the hands of the Teutonic invaders, and had remained concealed, its very position forgotten, until it was miraculously revealed. The coffin was then opened; the martyr's body and the relics given by Germanus were found therein, and thus the identity of the remains with those of Alban was established beyond doubt. Round the martyr's head Offa placed a golden circlet whereon were written the words: "Hoc est caput Sancti Albani." A reliquary richly decorated with precious stones was made to receive the body, and this was then deposited in the then existing church, which Offa repaired so that it might serve as a temporary resting-place until a grander church could be built. Offa had made a journey to Rome to get the Pope's consent to the foundation and endowment of the monastery.[2] At this time also Alban was canonized, so that henceforth he may be rightly spoken of as Saint Alban.
All that Offa seems to have been able to do besides repairing the church was to erect domestic buildings for his monks, who in course of time numbered a hundred. We have no record of any partial rebuilding, or enlargement even, of the church of Offa's day. From the fact that certain remains of it were incorporated in the present building, and that these were of the character generally called "Saxon," there is little doubt that the church of the monastery was not the little church erected in the fourth century over the martyr's grave, but one of later date, probably the one described by Beda as standing in his day, built in the latter part of the sixth or in the seventh century. We have no further record of this church, but we know that the ninth Abbot, Eadmer, began to collect materials for rebuilding the church; but the work was not begun until the time of the fourteenth Abbot, Paul of Caen, who was appointed by William I. So enthusiastically did he work, that in the short space of eleven years (1077-88) the church was rebuilt. The rapidity of the building was no doubt chiefly due to the fact that there was no need of hewing and squaring stone, for the Roman bricks from the ruins of the old city of Verulam were ready at hand, and the timber collected by Paul's five predecessors was well seasoned. It is said that the new church was not dedicated until the year 1115, but it is hard to believe that so long a space of time as twenty-seven years would be allowed to elapse between the completion of the building and the dedication. It is possible there may be some error in this date.
We can form a good idea of this Norman church. It was like several of the other cathedral and abbey churches built at the same time, of vast size, far grander than their prototype in Normandy, St. Stephen's at Caen. The following table gives approximately the dimensions of some of these churches:
| Length of Nave. | Number of Bays. | Total Length. | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nave. | Presbytery. | Apse. | |||
| St. Stephen's, Caen | 193 | 9 | 2 | … | 290 |
| Canterbury | 185 | 9 | 10 | 5 | 290 |
| Winchester | 318 | 14 | 3 | 5 | … |
| St. Albans | 275 | 13 | 4 | … | 460 |
| Bury St. Edmund's | 300 | 15 | 4 | 3 | 490 |
The church consisted of a nave with aisles; the arches of the main arcade were semicircular, the piers massive and rectangular; there were no mouldings, the orders of the arches, like the piers, having rectangular corners. There were possibly two western towers, which stood, like those of Rouen and Wells, outside the aisles on the north and south respectively, not at the western ends of the aisles (a far more common position), thus giving a much greater width and imposing appearance to the west front.
The existence of western towers of Norman date has been doubted by some antiquaries; some indeed imagine that John de Cella's thirteenth-century west front was built several bays further to the west than the Norman façade, and that the foundations of the unfinished towers were laid of old material by him. It is impossible to be absolutely certain on this point, but the argument sometimes brought forward that the nave was inordinately long for one of Norman date may be answered by mention of the fact that the Norman naves at Bury and Winchester were even longer, and that generally the Norman builders delighted in long structural naves, the eastern bays of which, however, were, together with the space beneath the towers, used for the choir or seats for the monks, the eastern part of the church beyond the crossing being generally occupied by the presbytery and the sanctuary where the high altar stood. In after times, however, considerable eastward extensions were made, as at Canterbury, and the monks' seats were then in many cases moved eastward into the part of the church beyond the tower, the rood-screen being stretched across the church between the eastern piers that supported the tower.[3]
The transept had no aisles either on its eastern or western side; the eastern termination differed much from anything in existence now.
Mr. Prior in his "History of Gothic Art in England" tells us that two types of east end were to be found in the Anglo-Norman churches, both brought from the Continent, one the chevet prevalent in Northern France, the other derived originally from fourth and fifth century churches of the East, passing to Lombardy in the ninth century, and then along the Rhine and even reaching Normandy. Such was the original eastern termination of St. Stephen's, Caen; such may still be seen in St. Nicholas', Caen. This east end consisted of a number of parallel aisles, each with its own apse at its eastern end. "Norman use had squared the aisle endings of the choir two bays beyond the cross, the apse projecting its half circle beyond this, as at St. Etienne's, Caen, and in this form Lanfranc's Canterbury had been built."[4]