During the restoration of 1849–58, excavations were carried out in which part of a Roman mosaic pavement was found deep beneath the floor, as well as evidence that the Saxon cathedral of AD 705 had been built on the site of a previous church.

[4] The Saxon Diocese of Sherborne was founded in 705 by King Ine of Wessex to relieve pressure from the growing see of Winchester.

[2] He set Aldhelm as first bishop of the see of Western Wessex, covering Dorset, Somerset, Devon, with his seat at Sherborne.

In 1075, Herman unified his two bishoprics into a single see with its seat at Old Sarum, so Sherborne remained an abbey church but was no longer a cathedral.

The Benedictine foundation at Sherborne ended in the dissolution of the monasteries in 1539, when the abbey was surrendered to King Henry VIII.

In 1550, King Edward VI issued a new charter to the school that had existed at Sherborne since 705, and some of the remaining abbey buildings were turned over to it.

In c.1050 Bishop Ælfwold II built a new cathedral and abbey church on the current site that was, apparently, one of the largest in England.

The remaining section of St. Mary le Bow's Chapel contains a fireplace mantel from when it was a domestic dwelling.

[16] The first almshouse at Sherborne, the Hospital of St. Thomas Becket (or St Thomas-a-Becket's Chapel), existed in 1228, though its foundation date is not known.

[26][27] The building was completed in 1448, consisting of a chapel (1442), ante-chapel with a door onto Trendle street, a dining hall, and dormitories above.

[27] In 1866 the east wing was built to create additional dormitories and a room with an oriel window called the board-room, together with other improvements.

Also, it is unusual for an almshouse to be so close to its respective church, and a possible reason may be that it was symbolic of the parishioners' growing resentment towards the monks for restricting their use of the abbey.

Sherborne's cloisters were built by Abbot Frith (1348–1373) and this is where the monks took their exercise, walking around the square arcade, in silence, with their hands buried in the long sleeves of their black habits.

[30] In the 12th century the monks built an open stone conduit or channel to bring clean water from the spring at New Well (Newell) to the cloister so that they could wash their hands and faces before going to the Refectory for their meals.

[34] Archaeological excavations between 1972 and 1976 revealed the east cloister range and the chapter house, the remains of which are now stored in the Sherborne School Archives.

Behind this is a late 14th century stone spiral staircase that originally led to the abbot's private chapel on the upper floor of the south cloister range.

[39] An archaeological dig in 1967 revealed a pottery kiln built into the west wall, and from 1740 the main body of the building was used as a silk mill.

Others have suggested that it may have been a misericorde (the room in which some monastic rules were relaxed, especially fasting) where more substantial food was supplied than in the refectory.

Until 1280, people who converted from Judaism to Christianity forfeited their possessions to the Crown), but there is little to suggest that that such members were ever numerous enough to justify such a large room, nor are there any traces of separate cells.

[40] The piscina (a perforated stone basin near the altar for carrying away holy water after it has been used in rinsing the chalice) can still be seen on the north aisle wall of the abbey.

The stones from the refectory are thought to have been used to build the original 'scholehouse' for the king's school[44] which had been given a royal charter only four years earlier.

The remains of the All Hallows font are now in the St. Mary le Bow Chapel, and most of the bells were transferred to the abbey tower.

Robert Neville, Bishop of Salisbury, held an inquiry soon after in an attempt to reconcile the dispute, ultimately taking the side of the parishioners – the monks had arbitrarily disrupted their baptismal processions by moving the font and obstructing the door to the nave.

He ordered the monks to move the abbey font back to its ancient position and to widen the door they had narrowed.

In the end, the Pope was needed to settle the conflict and the townspeople were forced to contribute to the repairs of St. Mary's Church which they had destroyed.

The diarist Richard Symonds, post 1664–1665, described the location, blazon and surname for coats of arms of some leading families of Dorset displayed on stained glass in the Sherborne church as he observed them during the marches of the Royal Army during the English Civil War.

This included the replacement of headstocks, bearings, wheels, pulley assemblies, clappers, stays and sliders, and the removal of the cast-in crown staples.

By 1987 an increasing lack of reliability led to a proposed scheme by Bishop & Son of Ipswich, favouring a return to the Gray & Davison past by almost halving the number of stops, returning the console to the organ loft – attached to the case – and altering the choir division into more of a bombarde to try to overcome the difficulties of the position of the organ.

[3][71] Despite these numerous alterations, much of the pedal division, some of the choir flutes and clarinet, all except the mixture on the great, and much of the chorus swell are original Gray & Davison stops.

Sources for the following names and dates include the Registrum Sacrum Anglicanum by William Stubbs (1897), surviving charter signatures, W.B.