The tower, which is the oldest surviving part, dates to the late tenth or early eleventh century, built perhaps around the year 1000, before the Conquest.

This makes it a pre-Conquest structure that survived into the Norman period.

In the early Norman era, a third storey was added to the tower in a Romanesque style using dressed limestone, reflecting the architectural changes that came with the new rulers.

It was a church that had lived through the Conquest itself, physically modified by the people who came after.

Conquest Man was buried in this church, or in its immediate precinct, in a coffin that the tree-ring dating places to around 1079.