Returning home, Rahere gained the king's consent to the work, which was forthwith begun, and assisted greatly by miraculous agency; such as bright light shining on the roof of the rising edifice, wonderful cures worked there, and all such supernatural revelations. When Rahere died, in the odour of sanctity, and the first prior of his foundation, he left thirteen canons attached to it; which number his successor, Prior Thomas, had raised in 1174 to thirty-five. Thus the monastery grew through successive priors, till it was one of the largest religious houses in London. Its precincts and accessories extended at one time as far as Aldersgate Street; these however vanished with the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII., and all that remains to the present day is the abbreviated priory church and a small part of a cloister. In monastic times the nave of the edifice extended, indeed, the whole length of the little churchyard, as far as the dog-toothed Smithfield entrance gate; but of the ancient church nothing now remains intact but the choir, with the first bay of the nave and portions of the transepts. Yet the recent restorations have been most successfully carried out, and the first view of the interior is striking in its grand old Norman simplicity. The choir has a triforium and a clerestory, and terminates in an apse, pierced by curious horseshoe arches; behind runs a circulating ambulatory dividing it from the adjoining "Lady chapel." Worthy of notice is the finely-wrought modern iron screen, the work of Mr. Starkie Gardner, that separates this chapel from the apse. The church has been altered, added to, or mutilated, from time to time; and other styles of architecture, such as Perpendicular, have occasionally been introduced; but yet the main effect of the interior is Norman. The beautiful Norman apse, built over and obliterated in the 15th century, has, by the talent of Mr. Aston Webb, been now restored to its original design. Indeed, the whole edifice has in recent times and by the efforts of late rectors and patrons, been extricated from dirt, lumber and decay; the work of restoration beginning in 1864. The restorer has done his work most faithfully, preserving all the old walls, and utilising the old Norman stones used in previous re-buildings.