Here the body rested till the days of Canute (1016–1035), who transferred the relics to Evesham Abbey. In the year 1207 its central tower fell, smashing the presbytery and all that it contained, including the shrine of St. Wystan. The monks recovered the relics, and at the earnest request of the prior and canons of Repton granted to them “a portion of the broken skull and a piece of an arm bone.” The bearers of the precious relics were met by a procession of prior canons, and others from Repton; “with tears of joy they placed the relics, not as before in the mausoleum of St. Wystan’s grandfather, but in a shrine more worthy, more suitable, and as honourable as it was possible to make it in their own Priory Chapel.” About twenty years after the murder of St. Wystan, the Danes again invaded the land. During the reign of Alfred, in A.D. 874, they penetrated up the river Trent into the heart of Mercia, and took up their winter quarters at Repton, as we read in the _Saxon Chronicle_. Here they made a camp, a parallelogram of raised earth, still _in situ_, by the side of the river Trent. Its dimensions are: north side, 75 yards 1 foot; south side, 68 yards 1 foot; east side, 52 yards 1 foot; west side, 54 yards 2 feet. Within the four embankments are two rounded mounds, and parallel with the south side are two inner ramparts, and one parallel with the north. The local name for it is “The Buries.” The next year, 875, they departed, having, as Ingulph relates, “utterly destroyed that most celebrated monastery, the most sacred mausoleum of all the Kings of Mercia.” For about a century the site of the monastery remained desolate, until the reign of Edgar the Peaceable (959–975), when, as the Rev. Dr. Cox writes, “Probably about that period the religious ardour of the persecuted Saxons revived ... their thoughts would naturally revert to the glories of monastic Repton in the days gone by.” On the site of or close to the ruined abbey a church was built, and dedicated to St. Wystan. In _Domesday Book_ Repton is entered as having a church with two priests, which proves the size and importance of the church and parish in those early days. According to several writers it was built of stout oak beams, and planks, on a foundation of stone, and its sides were made of wattle, composed of withy twigs, interlaced between the oak beams, daubed within and without with mud or clay. The floor of the chancel, supported on beams of wood, was higher than the present one, so it had an upper and lower “choir,” the lower one being lit by narrow lights, two of which, blocked up, can be seen in the south wall of the chancel.