The new Cathedral of Sherborne served St Aldhelm and twenty-six succeeding Saxon Bishops. Small at first, it was later enlarged. A few important early features still survive (when you come into the Abbey, see the fine Saxon doorway in the NW corner). Soon after the Norman Conquest the Bishop’s seat was moved to Old Sarum, and later Salisbury. Earlier, in 998, St Wulfsin had ejected the community of secular canons who served the Cathedral, and invited monks of the Order of St Benedict to replace them. Sherborne Abbey remained a Benedictine house until 1539 when Abbot John Barnstaple and his sixteen fellow monks surrendered it to King Henry VIII.

Relations between the monks and the people of Sherborne were not always good,  such that the Church of All Hallows was built by the monks, actually joined to the Abbey itself.  On the outside, to the left and right of the West End the ‘joins’ can still be seen. This smaller church was for the use of the townspeople – who always resented being pushed out of what had once been ‘their’ church. Tensions between the monks and the town came to a head in 1437 when the people decided they had had enough of having to go cap in hand to the Abbot every time they wanted to use the font for a baptism, and decided to erect a font of their own in All  Hallows. The Abbot was enraged, and according to the contemporary chronicle sent a ‘stout butcher’ armed with a hammer into the smaller church to break the font.

This caused a riot, during which a burning arrow was shot into the east end of the Abbey, at that time full of wooden scaffolding for the rebuilding of the roof. The fire that resulted permanently reddened the walls of the quire and the crossing. It took the Pope himself to settle the conflict – and the people had to pay for the repairs! No wonder that at the Reformation they were delighted to regain possession of what has ever since been their parish church. They immediately pulled down All Hallows as being surplus to requirements. Ironically, as you now enter the Abbey by the SW porch, you will see not only a large Victorian font just inside the door, but if you look straight down the south aisle you will see in the distance another font, in the Bow Chapel. The bowl of this is clearly medieval, and just possibly all that remains of the broken font from All Hallows.

Tradition certainly runs like a stream through the Abbey. Two Saxon kings are buried here; for over 800 years the chanting of Benedictine monks filled the air. Thomas Wyatt, Tudor courtier and poet, has his grave here; Sir Walter Raleigh worshipped here. But it is a living tradition: the Abbey today is still the spiritual home of a large and vibrant Christian community. It remains above all a place of prayer and of worship.