St Oswald's Anglo Saxon Minster and Medieval Priory

St Oswald's Anglo Saxon Minster and Medieval Priory. . The standing wall on this site incorporates remnants of the church built about 900 AD by Aethelflaed, the daughter of King Alfred the Great. , Aethelflaed and her husband Aethelred were rulers of Mercia at a time when its eastern territory was occupied by Danish Viking armies. , Aethelflaed re-fortified the decayed Roman town of Gloucester. Just outside the walls she built this church , the New Minster. In 909 Aethelflaed and her brother Edward, King of Wessex, successfully led an army into Danish-held Lincolnshire and brought back powerful relics; the bones of Saint Oswald of Northumbria. The relics were placed in a crypt at the east end of the new church. Aethelflaed's husband, and then Aethelflaed herself, were buried here. For the next century the New Minster of St Oswald was famous for its wealth and its miracles; it was nicknamed The Golden Minster. , The fame and wealth of St Oswald's declined in the century before the Norman conquest. By 1100 the Old Minster, St Peter's Abbey, overshadowed St Oswald's in every way. In 1152 St Oswald's became an Augustinian Priory. A cloister and guest-houses for the priory canons were built about 1250 and the church extended to the west. , The Priory was dissolved by 1537. The guesthouse became a private house. St Oswald's, unlike most monasteries and priories, had its own parishioners, so the arcade arches were blocked up and the north aisle was converted into a little church. In 1656 even this was pulled down except for the wall which still survives. , For two centuries the parishioners had no church, only a burial ground. A new church built beside the ruin in 1867 was pulled down only 48 years later. Today's church, dedicated to St. Catharine, was built elsewhere in the parish in 1915.