A History of Lancashire

by Henry Fishwick

The establishment at Hornby was scarcely worthy of the name of a priory, but was rather a hospital or cell with a Prior and three canons dependent on the abbey of Croxton, in Leicestershire. It was dedicated to St. Wilfrid, and had a small endowment of £26 a year.

In the hundred of Amounderness the Great Survey only refers to three churches, and these, though not named, were undoubtedly Preston, Kirkham, and St. Michael’s–on–Wyre; and in the absence of proof to the contrary we must assume that none others were then in existence, though possibly others may have been erected in Saxon times, but, like the district upon which they stood, were then lying waste ([see p. 57]). Poulton is dedicated to St. Chad (a Saxon saint), and Garstang may possibly have been the site of a pre–Conquest church, although its proximity to St. Michael’s renders it somewhat improbable.

Preston Church was originally dedicated to St. Wilfrid, and was probably built in the tenth century; Kirkham,[181] or the church village, may even be of an earlier foundation than Preston, for from the time that Roger de Poictou granted the church to St. Mary of Lancaster ([see p. 187]) to the present date its history is clear and fairly complete; no trace of the Saxon building has, however, been discovered.

At St. Michael’s, also, all material evidence of the pre–Norman period has long ago disappeared. In Amounderness only two religious houses were established—one at Preston, the other at Lytham. At Preston was a Franciscan convent of Grey Friars, or Friars Minor, built in 1221 by Edmund, Earl of Lancaster. Within the precincts of this house was buried Sir Robert Holland, who impeached Thomas, Earl of Lancaster of treason. Little is known concerning this friary; in 1379 letters were addressed to the Warden of the order of Preaching Friars there, asking them to pray for the Duke of Lancaster on his going abroad. There was also at Preston a hospital for lepers, which must have been established early in the twelfth century, as Henry II. took it under his protection, as did also King John; there was a chapel attached dedicated to St. Mary Magdalen. The cell at Lytham was dependent upon the Priors of Durham from its foundation in 1190 to 1443, when it became partly independent. They were black monks.

In the hundred of Leyland no churches are mentioned in Domesday Book, but there was almost certainly one at Croston and another at Eccleston, as both these were given to the priory of Lancaster in 1090 ([see p. 187]), and if not in existence at the taking of the Survey one can scarcely avoid coming to the conclusion that long before that date churches had been erected at Eccleston, Leyland and Standish, the latter being dedicated, like Preston, to St. Wilfrid.

On a site on the opposite side of the river Ribble to Preston stood the priory of Penwortham. Its situation was picturesque, commanding as it did an exclusive view down the valley, through which the river flowed, and not far from it were the parish church and castle. It was founded as a dependent upon the abbey of Evesham, in the county of Worcester, in 1087, by two brothers, Warine and Albert Busset, with the approval of Pope Alexander III., and it was for 400 years regularly supplied with monks from the parent house. The monks were Benedictines, or black monks, and their home in Lancashire was but sparsely endowed, although it included the churches of Penwortham, Leyland and North Meols. At the dissolution it was rated at a little over £100. No great number of churches were erected in this hundred during several succeeding centuries.

In Blackburn Hundred two churches are named in the Survey—St. Mary’s at Whalley and St. Mary’s at Blackburn—and the only other parish at all likely to have had a church earlier than this period is Ribchester. The present church is dedicated to St. Wilfrid, and tradition adds that its original foundation was laid in Saxon times; it certainly is built close to the walls of the ancient Roman castrum ([see p. 27]). Another very early foundation was that of Chipping, said to have been built in 1041. St. Mary’s of Blackburn is still the parish church, but there is no evidence to prove that its foundation dates back to pre–Norman times.

The church at Whalley is perhaps the most interesting church in Lancashire, not only from its undoubted great antiquity, but from its association with the abbey, which was second only to Furness in importance, but about the history of which much more is known.

John, Constable of Chester, in 15 Henry II. (1163), founded a monastery of the Cistercian Order at Stanlawe, in Cheshire, and having endowed it, he instructed that it should be called Locus Benedictus. The situation selected was not a happy one, as not only was the soil barren and unfruitful, but a considerable portion of it was liable to periodical encroachments by the sea, which at spring tide almost surrounded it. After almost a century, the monks—when the monks had become considerably richer by the acquisition of properties, chiefly in Lancashire—decided to remove the abbey to a more convenient site, and ultimately fixed upon Whalley. This translation was, no doubt, hastened by the destruction of a great part of Stanlawe Abbey by fire in 1289, but it was not until April 4, 1296, that Gregory, the eighth Abbot of Stanlawe, and his convent took formal possession of the parsonage of Whalley, where they continued to live until the new monastery was erected. Here they found one of the oldest church foundations in Lancashire, which probably dated back to the time when Christianity was first introduced into the district; it was originally known as the White Church, and in its churchyard still remain three very fine specimens of Saxon crosses. The church was another of the Northern erections dedicated to St. Wilfrid, and at the time the monks settled there it had been rebuilt, and was a good sample of Norman ecclesiastical architecture.

Amongst their other possessions the monks held the impropriate rectories of Whalley, Blackburn and Rochdale, with the right of presentment to their vicarages and chapels of ease. Attached to Whalley were the chapels of Clitheroe, Colne, Burnley, Altham, Downham, Church and Haslingden. Whalley now (to quote the language of its historian)[182] “became the seat of an establishment which continued for two centuries and a half to exercise unbounded hospitality and charity; to adorn the site which had been chosen with a succession of magnificent buildings; to protect the tenants of its ample domains in the enjoyment of independence and plenty; to educate and provide for their children; to employ, clothe, feed and pay many labourers, herdsmen and shepherds; to exercise the arts and cultivate the learning of the times; yet, unfortunately, at the expense of the secular incumbents, whose endowments they had swallowed up and whose functions they had degraded into those of pensionary vicars or mendicant chaplains.”