ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



the parish church of the adjacent Salford, and Walton-on-the-Hill of (West) 

 Derby. Wigan, though more remote from Newton, which moreover was in 

 the parish of Winwick, is generally regarded as the church which Domesday 

 speaks of as 'the church of this manor' (i.e. Newton). It would seem more 

 natural for Winwick to have occupied that position, and it is difficult to 

 suggest an explanation of the actual state of things unless it be that Wigan 

 was its mother church." The smallness of the endowment of Blackburn as 

 compared with Whalley, which divided the hundred with it, is noteworthy, 

 and it is possible that the latter was the mother church." The evidence as 

 a whole, scanty though it be, especially in the cases where manor-house and 

 church were in different vills, seems to point to these five churches or most 

 of them being older than the hundredal division, which was probably sub- 

 sequent to the Mercian conquest. If Whalley be added we have a list 

 which pretty certainly includes the most ancient churches of ' Between 

 Ribble and Mersey,' from whose original parochiae the other parishes were 

 gradually cut out. The thirty parishes into which the district was ultimately 

 divided varied greatly in size.'' The most extensive were naturally in its 

 eastern moorlands ; Whalley — the largest — covered about i8o square miles and 

 comprised not less than thirty townships. Blackburn, Eccles, Rochdale, and 

 Manchester came next in the order named. The last had an area of sixty 

 square miles. All, especially Whalley and Rochdale, included great stretches 

 of waste land. The smallest were Radcliffe and Aughton — the only single 

 township parishes — and Flixton, containing two townships of less than average 

 size.*" 



The space allotted in Domesday to those parts of the present Lancashire 

 which lie north of the Ribble, and were then in the diocese of York, is even 

 scantier than that devoted to ' Between Ribble and Mersey,' and no more 

 than eight churches at most can be deduced from the Survey. 



Under Amounderness the enumeration of its vills is followed by a state- 

 ment that all these with three churches belong to Preston. The churches 

 referred to are presumably Kirkham (the vill is entered as Chicheham), 

 Poulton, and St. Michaels-on-Wyre (vill entered as Michelescherche). 



" Mr. Farrer suggests that as Newton Hundred (or manor) was probably cut out of that of West Derby, 

 the church of the former and mother church of Winwick may have been Walton-on-the-Hill. In support 

 of this hypothesis he points out that Robert de Walton, whom he takes to be the parson of Walton, held in 

 I2I2 one-third of the Winwick glebe of two carucates {Testa de Nevill, 405 ; Lanes. Inq. i, 72). But as the 

 carucate belonging 'to the church of the manor' in 1066 was exclusive of the two carucates held by 

 Winwick the suggested explanation presents difficulties of its own. 



" In the twelfth century, it is true, one-fourth of the tithes, &c., of Whalley and its chapels at Clitheroe 

 and DovfTiham was attached to the rectory of Blackburn ; Whalley Coucher, 91-4. But Henry de Lacy 

 {c. 1 150) in one of his charters claims that this benefice was the gift of his ancestors (ibid. 76). 



'' No less than twelve of the churches were dedicated (if the original dedications have survived) to 

 St. Mary (Manchester, Blackburn, Bury, Eccles, Leigh, Prescot, Prestwich, Walton-on-the-Hill, Whalley, Eccle- 

 ston, RadcliiFe, and Penwortham) ; five to St. Michael (Aughton, Croston, Huyton, Flixton, and Ashton- 

 under-Lyne) ; two each to St. Cuthbert (Halsall and North Meols), and All Saints (Childwall, Wigan), and 

 one each to St. Andrew (Leyland), St. Chad (Rochdale), St. Elfin (Warrington), St. Helen (Sefton), 

 St. Leonard (Middleton), St. Oswald (Winwick), St. Peter (Bolton), St. Peter and St. Paul (Ormskirk), and 

 St. Wilfrid (Standish). See Mr. Brownbill's article on 'Ancient Church Dedications in Ches. and South Lanes., 

 Trans. Hist. Soc. (New Ser.), xviii, 19-44. 



'° A number of the smaller parishes were no doubt of post-Conquest creation ; North Meols, for example, 

 was still a chapel about 1155 ; Farrer, Lanes. Pipe /?. 323. In this and probably other cases feudal chatages 

 seem to have altered ecclesiastical topography. North Meols was a detached township of the barony of 

 Penwortham. Eccleston was claimed as a chapel of Croston as late as 1 3 1 7 {Hist, of Lane. Church, Chet. Soc. 

 24, 411), but is described as a church in 1 094 ; Lanes. Pipe R. 290. Sefton church, which is first mentioned 

 in 1203, was probably formed out of Walton. 



7 



