original Norman church had an apsidal liturgical east end, and its side aisles ended in apses, though they were square on the exterior. Rebuilding began in 1270, under the direction of Abbot Simon de Warwick, and was swiftly completed during a single twenty-four year building campaign, such was the financial strength of the abbey. The completed abbey church was in length, consisted of a nave with aisles, north and south transepts with chapels in an eastern aisle, and a presbytery with aisles. To the east of the cloister and on the line of the transepts were a vestibule leading to the chapter house, the scriptorium and library. Beyond the church lay the kitchen, novices' building and infirmary. The Abbey chronicle (which has not been fully translated from Latin) names the project officers as Simon de Warwick, a monk administrator and the master stonemason Master Simon, all of whom were still alive upon the completion of the project in 1294. The Abbot's House The abbot's house, built of brick in 1483, survives as the King's Manor because it became the seat of the Council of the North in 1539; the abbots of St Mary's and the abbey featured in the medieval and early modern ballads of Robin Hood, with the abbot usually as Robin Hood's nemesis. In August 1513 the Abbot supplied four chests for the use of Philip Tilney, treasurer of the English army before the Battle of Flodden. The Abbey seems to have become the accounting office for the army in the north, involving Thomas Magnus, Archdeacon of the East Riding, and two monks of the abbey, Richard Wode and Richard Rypon. The Dissolution St Mary's, the largest and richest Benedictine establishment in the north of England and one of the largest landholders in Yorkshire, was worth over £2,000 a year, (), when it was valued in 1539, during the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII; it was closed and subsequently substantially destroyed. On 26 November 1539 the Abbey surrendered £2,085 and 50 monks to the Crown. Library A fifteenth-century index catalogue records that the Abbey's library originally contained over 750 books. Approximately thirty-five texts from the Abbey are currently extant, including only five printed books; these include a 15th-century copy of Richard Rolle's Incendium Amoris. Brother Grayson's Bible A Vulgate Bible, sold at auction in England in 2010, has been identified as the possession of Brother John