RELIGIOUS HOUSES 



HOUSE OF CLUNIAC MONKS 



4. THE CELL OF KERSAL 



In the reign of Stephen Ranulf Gernons, earl 

 of Chester, when in possession of the district 

 ' between Ribble and Mersey ' gave the hamlet 

 of Kersal in the township of Broughton, parcel 

 of his demesne manor of Salford, to the Cluniac 

 priory of Lenton, near Nottingham, in free alms 

 for the establishment of a place of religion. The 

 gift, the date of which lies between 1 1 43 and 

 1 153, included rights of fishery in the Irwell 

 and of pasture on and approvement of the 

 waste,^ Ranulf 's tenure of ' between Ribble and 

 Mersey ' was a mere interlude, and between 

 1174 and 1 176 Henry II regranted Kersal to 

 Lenton Priory without mention of any previous 

 grant.^ In his charter it is described as a 

 hermitage which the monks of Lenton are to 

 hold as freely and quietly as Hugh de Buron 

 their monk held it.' This seems to point to 

 some interruption in their ownership. King 

 John confirmed his father's grant on 2 April, 

 1200. Whether Lenton at first kept more than 

 a single monk at Kersal is not quite clear. The 

 papal delegates who, about the date of John's 

 confirmation, settled a dispute between the 

 monks of Lenton and Albert de Nevill, rector of 

 Manchester, in whose parish Kersal lay, ordered 

 that the ' prior sive alius qui apud Kersale pro 

 loco custodiendo pro tempore fiierit ' should 

 always promise to observe the rights of the 

 mother church. It is not, however, until the 

 fourteenth century that the existence of a prior 

 of Kersal is definitely attested. From a Cluniac 

 visitation of that date it appears that there were 

 then a prior and one monk in the cell. Mass 

 was celebrated only once a day.* The dispute 

 with the rector of Manchester referred to above 

 arose out of the diversion of tithes, oiFerings, and 

 mortuaries to the chapel and cemetery of the cell. 

 By the settlement arrived at the rector conceded 

 the right of sepulture at Kersal in return for an 



' Farrer, Lanes. Pipe R. 326. Mr. Farrer assigns 

 it to 1 142, but see Tait, Mediaeval Manchester, 169. 



^ Lanes. Pipe R. 327; Pat. 17 Hen. VI, pt. i, 

 m. 9. This was always regarded as the foundation 

 charter ; Testa de Nevill, ii, fol. 827 ; Coram Rege R. 

 No. 442. 



' The reference to Hugh's time does not appear in 

 Edw. IPs inspeximus of the charter of Hen. II, but 

 it is given in that of Hen. VI, and was part of that 

 charter when produced in court in 1371 ; ibid. 

 Hugh was doubtless the hermit and may perhaps be 

 identified with the Hugh de Buron whose gifts to 

 Lenton were confirmed by Stephen or with his son ; 

 Dugdale, Mm. v, 108. He is said to have stayed at 

 Kersal until his death ; Coram Rege R. No. 442. 



* G. F. Duckett, Visitations of Engl. Cluniae Founda- 

 tions (1890), 43. 



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annual gift of two candles, each of i^ lb. of wax, 

 but no parishioner was to be buried or make 

 offerings there without full compensation to the 

 church at Manchester ; the admission of parish- 

 ioners to the sacraments by the monks was 

 forbidden.' 



Beyond this, a temporary seizure by the crown, 

 about 137 1, on the plea that the original gift 

 bound Lenton to keep two monks there,' and 

 one or two grants of land, the history of the cell 

 is a blank. It might have come to an end in 

 the fifteenth century had not Lenton, which as 

 a filiation of Cluny ranked as an alien priory, 

 secured letters of denization from Richard II in 

 1392-3.' 



Doctors Legh and Layton in their report 

 confined themselves to the financial condition of 

 the cell.* As one of the larger monasteries Lenton 

 escaped dissolution in 1536, but was already 

 being bled. The prior wrote to Cromwell 

 begging time to complete the payment of j^ 100 

 to him, and adding, ' I have accomplished your 

 pleasure touching the cell of Kersal in Lan- 

 cashyre.' ' What Cromwell's pleasure was there 

 is nothing to show. 



In April, 1538, Thurstan Tyldesley, hearing 

 that Lenton was about to come into the king's 

 possession, asked Cromwell to let him have the 

 farm of Kersal, which he said was worth twenty 

 marks a year — a considerably higher estimate 

 than the king's commissioners had made in 

 1535-6.^" The site and demesne lands of the 

 cell, however, were leased by the crown on 

 3 February, 1539, for twenty-one years to John 

 Wood, ' one of the Oistryngers,' at a rent of 

 j^ii 6j. 8^/." On 23 July, 1540, the crown 

 sold the cell to Baldwin Willoughby, sewer of 

 the chamber, for ;^I55 6j. 8(/.^^ 



Kersal cell was dedicated to St. Leonard.^' 

 Its original endowment was augmented in the 

 reign of Richard I or John by grants of two 

 parcels of land in the parish of Ashton-under- 

 Lyne ; Matthew son of Edith gave a portion of 

 his land in Audenshaw, and Alban of Alt half 



' Lanes. Pipe R. 331. 



' Coram Rege R. No. 442, ra. i d. A jury found 

 that though not bound to find more than one monk 

 at Kersal, the priory for fifty years past had kept there 

 two, and occasionally three, of their own free will. 



' Pat. 16 Ric. II, pt. 2, m. 19. During the French 

 wars it had been taken into the king's hands with the 

 other alien houses ; cf. Cal. of Pat. 1389-92, p. 29. 



»i. and P. Hen. Fill, x, 364. 



' Ibid. X, 1234. 



'° Ibid, xiii (i), 789. 



" Dugdale, Mon. v, no. 



" L. and P. Hen. Fill, xv, 942 (102). Sir John 

 Willoughby, kt., was steward of Lenton in 1535. 



" Lanes. Pipe R. 330. 



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