Cirencester Abbey was huge and impressive. But today it is very "not there". It is almost as though it was literally "dissolved". Tons of stone must have been carted off.:
In the reservation of the grant of the site of the Abbey to Roger Bassinge by Henry XVIII, it is expressly commanded that all the edifices within the site and precincts of the monastery should be pulled down and carted away, and the royal mandate was so punctually obeyed that Mr Willis, writing at the commencement of the last century (about 170 years after) says, "there is not the least token else of an Abbey remaining; all the materials of it are so wholly removed that the inhabitants cannot give any tolerable and satisfactory account of the site of the Church belonging to it." K.J. Beecham. History of Cirencester (1887) p.60.
Excavations in the mid-'60s uncovered the foundations of the main buildings, now laid out in outline.
Information on the Abbey:
Archaeology:
Archaeology of Cirencester Abbey [Corinium Museum online exhibit]
Cirencester Excavations IV
Entry on Gloucestershire's Historic Environment Record
History:
The new Victoria County History entry is comprehensive but a bit dull.
Alan Welsford manages to cheer up the dry facts with his researches on the manuscripts and scholars of the Abbey - apparently the 12th-century Canon Jocelyn is credited as the first Western scholar to specifically mention the Arabic numeral "zero".