§ 21. Now the aforesaid bishop, arriving at Durham with the saint’s body, found there a place strong by nature, but not easy to be inhabited, for a thick wood covered nearly the whole of it, save that in the middle there was a small plain, which they used to plough and sow. This wood was, with the aid of all the people, and Ucthred, Count of Northumberland, entirely grubbed up, and the place in a short time rendered habitable. The bishop then began to build a large church of stone. Meanwhile the saint’s body was removed from the little wooden church into another called “the White Church,” and remained there three years, until the larger church was built; and now the venerable Prelate Aldun solemnly consecrated that church on the third of September, in the third year after its foundations were laid, and transferred thither the body of St. Cuthbert, with all due honours, to a place which he had prepared for it. Thus the saint’s body, and the episcopal see, which was first founded by King Oswald and Bishop Aidan in the island of Lindisfarne, have remained in that place even to the present time; and from the year in which Aidan ascended the episcopal chair in the island of Lindisfarne, to the year in which Aldun ascended the same in Durham, is computed to be three hundred and sixty-one years, and three hundred and nine from the death of St. Cuthbert.