 The historian Nicholas Brooks noted that the "Domesday Monachorum" of 1087 or soon after lists Herne as the location of a minster, which is recorded nowhere else.Brooks speculated that this referred to the church excavated in 1976, and that it may have been founded in the 7th or 8th century, but perhaps as late as the 11th century.However, he regarded it as "perhaps most likely that the foundation of a [minster] at Herne should be attributed to the tenth century when attempts were being made to recover from the devastation of the Viking incursions."