But, alas,
although the waterways of the Avon and Stour are considerable,
Christchurch Harbour long ago silted up and the long tongue of land
that runs eastward across the mouth effectually bars ingress to
anything in the nature of a trading vessel.
The town, though pleasant enough in itself, has but one real
attraction for the visitor and, judging by the crowds of
holiday-makers brought in every day by motor, tram and train from the
huge pleasure town on the west, the study of ecclesiastical
architecture must be gaining favour with the British public. Or is it
that the uncompromising modernity of Bournemouth, without even the
recollection of a Hanoverian princess to give it antiquity, drives its
visitors in such swarms to the one-time Priory, and now longest parish
church in England.
The old Saxon minster, after passing through many vicissitudes
(including a particularly humiliating one at the hands of William
Rufus, whose creature, Flambard, made slaves of its clergy and ran the
church as a miracle show!), became in the middle of the twelfth
century an Augustinian priory and the choir of the new building was
finished just before 1300.
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