The Norman and Medieval Eras
After the Norman Conquest a large stone Abbey was built in ©1110 in ‘Transitional Norman/ Early English style’ The Abbey church was an imposing building 250 ft long and about the same size as Rochester Cathedral, and has the chapter house on the north side in the same manner as the Cathedrals of Chester, Gloucester, and Canterbury. The tower and spire, if it had a spire, would have been seen for miles around.
From then on there would have been virtually constant building on the Abbey site, which would have included those ground works we still see today, which are the Abbey river, the moats, and the fish ponds in the Abbey Orchard, some walls, an oven and a gateway. Only three digs have taken place on the Abbey site proper and a good deal of the area is undisturbed by trowel, sieve, and modern technology, so there is much more to be discovered. Monks bones from the graveyard turn up at regular intervals when utility workers dig to lay pipes, electricity cables etc.
Chertsey Abbey’s most famous product was its large thick terra cotta tiles © 1270/90. These tiles wrongly called ‘encaustic’ by those who found them in the 1860s at the time of the first dig by Mannering Shurlock. Shurlock wrote a large book with life size illustrations of the tiles he found. Chertsey Abbey tiles were the finest graphic tiles to be found anywhere in Europe and totally unique in their many pictorial and texted story line. It is quite clear from the recent research done by Elizabeth Eames and others that those medieval persons engaged in the designing, making, cutting the metal picture dies, firing and distributing this product were the finest artists/craftsmen in this medium in their time.
They were never surpassed in their era, and a whole pristine floor of them together would have looked absolutely magnificent for those privileged enough to see them or to be able to read the text. From the costs involved and the amount made, the man who commissioned this local industry might have been Royal person or someone with very deep pockets close to the Court. Fragments of these tiles can be found in Chertsey Museum, Guildford Museum, and the finest of all in the British Museum. Chertsey tile designs are also associated with Halesowen Abbey in the Midlands.
The oldest building in the town still extant is the stone part of the tower of St. Peter’s Church. This is about 1310 and built next to the aforesaid water spring in the focus of the town. Chertsey is a ‘Curfew Town’ and it is from this tower that the curfew bell is still rung today about eight in the evening during the winter. It is then that the citizens of the Parish are supposed to cover their fires and snuff out their candles as they did of old. The main body of the medieval church with a long sloping tiled roof was replaced early in the nineteenth century by the structure we see today. The chapel has a few small Chertsey tiles en situ and they are all decorated with the same serpent motif.
The corpse Henry V1 (son of Henry V) was bought up the Thames to Chertsey Abbey by boat after his violent death by knifing in the Tower of London in 1471, 
and this was after his blood-stained body had been hawked around some London churches where the faithful could brush their fingers over his wounds in order to cure their ills. His internment in the Abbey Church close to the alter was a short one. The godly Henry V1 was regarded by the faithful as a Saint and pilgrims came from all over to pray.
The Abbey and the town became very rich on the donations of the pilgrims who flocked to his shrine and the money they spent in the Inns which cropped up to cater for them. His Royal cadaver was removed to Windsor on the orders of Richard 111 in 1484. Henry V1 was a King from childhood and was one of those individuals who became more popular dead than when living. The mythical, or semi-mythical Blanche Heriot hanging on the Abbey bell is set about this period of the Wars of the Roses.
Chertsey Abbey was extremely rich and had lands in this area given to it by the wealthy faithful. There were also lands outstanding in London, and South Wales. A cursary look through a modern map index of the wider area will show many ‘Chertsey roads or streets’ from Chiswick in the north, to Guildford in the south.
The normal cluster of buildings on the Abbey site would have included the Abbey Church, bell tower, north cloisters, chapter house, monks dormitory, lay dormitory, gate house, guest-house, monks necessarium (latrines), lay persons loos, refectory, kitchens, brew house, mill, infirmary, workshops, kiln, stables, gardens, fish ponds, dovecot, boathouse, great barn, fuel store, etc. etc. Robin and Mary Haigh keep a dovecot going today on the site.