At first sight the village church at Lastingham, set upon a hillock on the edge of the moors with the ground dropping away to the east, looks like a standard Norman parish church with later additions (Figure 1). The exterior has an eastern apse, preceded by a forebay, with Romanesque detailing: a string-course with billet and other abstract ornament beneath round-headed windows. The aisles have tracery windows of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century date, and the tower is fifteenth century. It could pass muster as any ordinary parish church; but further inspection reveals something very rare. The apse is two-storied, a lower central window indicating the presence of a crypt within, and in the forebay on each side a low mural arch allows light into the crypt through a small eastward-facing window (Figure 2). On entering the church, we are presented towards the west with four large Romanesque piers designed to support the crossing of a substantial cruciform church (Figure 3). What we are dealing with, in fact, is not a simple parish church, but a partly completed Benedictine abbey church later converted for parochial use. We are doubly fortunate, not only that the monastic fabric has survived (albeit somewhat altered from the original design), but that there is documentary evidence that testifies to the brief period in the early 1080s in which it must have been raised, and the reasons why it was never completed.