The next bishop, however, transferred (1102) the see to Coventry on account of the rich monastery there, though he retained the episcopal palace at Chester.

The church was served by a small chapter of secular canons until 1093, when Hugh Lupus, Earl of Chester, converted it into a major Benedictine monastery, in which foundation he had the co-operation of St Anselm, then Prior of Bec, who sent Richard, one of his monks, to be the first abbot.

The monastery, though suffering loss of property both by the depredations of the Welsh and the inroads of the sea, prospered, and in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries the monks transformed their Norman church into a gothic building which, though not be reckoned among the greatest cathedrals of England, yet is not unworthy of its rank, and affords a valuable study in the evolution of Gothic architecture.

[4] The twenty deaneries of the new diocese were: Amounderness, Bangor, Blackburn, Boroughbridge, Catterick, Chester, Copeland, Frodsham, Furness, Kendal, Leyland, Lonsdale, Macclesfield, Malpas, Manchester, Middlewich, Nantwich, Richmond, Warrington, and Wirral.

The deaneries as shown in the accompanying map, were established by 1224 and remained largely unchanged until the nineteenth century.

[5] Starting in 1836, a series of boundary changes saw the diocese eventually greatly diminished in size so that its extent was almost the same as that of the ceremonial county of Cheshire as it existed just prior to 1974.

This left the deaneries of Copeland, Furness, and the remaining parts of the deaneries of Kendal and Lonsdale detached from the main part of the diocese around Chester, provision was made to transfer these to the Diocese of Carlisle, but this required the assent of the then Bishop of Carlisle, or the appointment of a successor.

The detached deaneries in the north of Lancashire and in the Lake District were eventually transferred to the Diocese of Carlisle in 1856, on the appointment of Henry Montagu Villiers to the See.