Ever since visiting Lincoln Cathedral I have wanted to see Dorchester Abbey (Dorchester on Thames, not Dorchester, Dorset), situated in what is now a quintesential English villlage, but in Saxon times the seat of a Bishoppric which extended from the south coast to the midlands, and later to a bishoppric extending from the Thames to the Humber. The bishopric was moved under William the Conqueror to Lincoln as part of the Norman subjugation of the north. Nothing remains of the saxon Abbey. The current abbey stems from a foundation around 1140AD by the Bishop of Lincoln as an Arrouaisian Abbey, a convent of Canons who followed the Rule of Saint Augustin but in an austere form akin to the Cistercians. Canons from Dorchester subsequently founded Lilleshall Abbey in Shropshire. The Abbey was dissolved in 1536 and the monastic buildings destroyed, but the body of the church was preserved for parish use because a rich local landowner paid Henry VIII's commissioners £140 for the lead on the roof.