A HISTORY OF LANCASHIRE 



Preston itself made a fourth parish. As Chipping -^ Ribchester which 

 are now in Blackburn Hundred, were then in A-oundernesthej would 

 appear not to have been as yet separate parishes. Lytham and Garstang, 



^-' 'oJ^Z^JS:^^^^:^^^.^ are speciHcally mentioned n 

 the laVerLnsdale HundrU, but Kirk Lancaster (Chercaloncastre) i includ d 

 amone the vills dependent on Halton, and Mr. Farrer is no doubt right n 

 denti'fy ng the Che^chebi which had been held as one manor by Duuan m 

 the time of King Edward with Cartmel ^Kirkby-in-Cartmel). To this 

 meagre list the foundation charter of Lancaster Priory (r. 1094) ^ff ^^^^f^^" 

 le-Sands, Heysham, and Melling « while thirteen others occur in twelfth- 



""'7he°trnty-s"ix parishes in this part of the county at the end of the 

 thirteenth century « included a larger proportion of small parishes than was 

 the case south of the Ribble. There were seven sing e-township parishes— 

 Pennington, Whittington, Tatham, Halton, Claughton, Heysham, and 

 Lytham " Some of these besides Lytham may have been of post-Conquest 

 origin. Lancaster and Dalton-in-Furness were the most extensive, but both 

 contained large areas of wood and fell. 



It is a striking indication of the backwardness of the districts now 

 included in Lancashire that not a single religious house had been founded 

 within them before the Norman Conquest. No land was held there in 

 1086 by any monastery or church without its limits, though, as we have 

 seen, grants had been made at various times to Lindisfarne (Durham) and 

 St. Peter's, York." Eight years after the date of Domesday, however, count 

 Roger of Poitou founded Lancaster Priory as a cell of the Norman abbey of 

 St. Martin at Sees.*" The first denizen house was established thirty years 

 later by his successor, as lord of the honour of Lancaster, at Tulketh by 

 Preston and removed after three years to Furness." Before the close of the 

 twelfth century eight other religious houses had been established, but half of 

 these were mere cells of monasteries outside the county.*' Count Roger and 

 his sheriff Godfrey also made liberal grants to Shrewsbury Abbey and the 

 priory of Nostell. 



To the period immediately after the Conquest belongs not only the 

 temporary transference of the see of Lichfield to Chester, but the division of 

 that and other dioceses into territorial archdeaconries. Hitherto the bishops 

 had needed but one ' eye ' ; but now almost every county was provided with 



" Trans. Lanes, and Ches. ^ntiq. Soc. xviii, 98. 



" For other churches known to have been of pre-Conquest date see above, p. 4. 



" Of these six were dedicated (if their original dedications have survived) to St. Michael (Kirkham, 

 St. Michaels-on-Wyre, Cockerham, Tunstall, Urswick, Pennington) ; four to St. Mary (Lancaster, Cartmel, 

 Ulverston, Dalton-in-Fumess) ; three each to St. Cuthbert (Lytham, Aldingham, Kirkby Ireleth), and 

 St. Wilfrid (Preston, Ribchester, Halton) ; two each to St. Peter (Heysham, Melling), St. Chad (Poulton, 

 Claughton), and Holy Trinity (Bolton-le-Sands, Warton) ; and one each to St. Bartholomew (Chipping), 

 St. Helen (Garstang), and St. James (Tatham). Some cases of adjoining parishes with the same invocation 

 e.g. Kirkham, St. Michaels-on-Wyre, and Cockerham may be due to affiliation. In 1205 an attempt to prove 

 that Garstang was a chapel of St. Michaels-on-Wyre failed on an adverse verdict of a jury {Lanes. Pipe R. loz 

 19-). Fume53 Abbey a few years later claimed Pennington and Ulverston as chapels of Urswick (ibid. %6i). 

 Dedications to St. James and Holy Trinity are probably late. The St. Chad dedications if original are un- 

 expected beyond the bounds of his diocese. The Whittington invocation is unknown. 



" Claughton was the smallest in the county. Lytham seems to have been taken out of Kirkham 

 '•' See above, pp. 2, 4, 5. " See p. 167, 'Religious Houses.' 



'• See p. 1 14, ' Religious Houses.' " See p. loz, 'Religious Houses.' 



