Chapter X: The Old Churches and the Old Halls

Christianity in Lancashire--so far, at all events, as concerns the outward expression through the medium of places of worship--had a very early beginning, the period being that of Paulinus, one of the missionaries brought into England by Augustine. In 625 the kingdom of Northumbria, which included the northern portions of the modern county of Lancaster, had for its monarch the celebrated Edwin--he who espoused the Christian princess Edilberga, daughter of the king of Kent--the pious woman to whom the royal conversion was no doubt as largely owing as to the exhortations of the priest who found in her court welcome and protection. The story is told at length by Bede. There is no necessity to recapitulate it. The king was baptized, and Christianity became the state religion of the northern Angles. Paulinus nowhere in his great diocese--that of York--found listeners more willing than the ancestors of the people of East Lancashire; and as nearly as possible twelve and a half centuries ago, the foundations were laid at Whalley of the mother church of the district so legitimately proud to-day of a memorial almost unique. Three stone crosses, much defaced by exposure to the weather, still exist in the graveyard. They are considered by antiquaries to have been erected in the time of Paulinus himself, and possibly by his direction; similar crosses occurring near Burnley Church, and at Dewsbury and Ilkley in Yorkshire. The site is a few yards to the north of that one afterwards chosen for the abbey. The primitive Anglo-Saxon churches, it is scarcely requisite to say, were constructed chiefly, and often entirely, of wood.[41] Hence their extreme perishableness, especially in the humid climate of Lancashire; hence also the long step to the next extant mementoes of ecclesiastical movement in this county; for these, with one solitary exception, pertain, like the old castles, to the early Norman times. The Saxon relic is one of the most interesting in the north of England; and is peculiarly distinguished by the mournful circumstances of the story which envelops it, though the particular incidents are beyond discovery. At Heysham, as before mentioned, four miles from Lancaster, on the edge of Morecambe Bay, there is a little projecting rock, the only one thereabouts. Upon the summit formerly stood "St. Patrick's Chapel," destroyed ages ago, though the site is still traceable; fragments of stonework used in the building of the diminutive Norman church beneath, and others in the graveyard, adding their testimony. That, however, which attracts the visitor is the existence to this day, upon the bare and exposed surface of the rock, of half a dozen excavations adapted to hold the remains of human beings of various stature--children as well as adults. These "coffins," as the villagers call them, tell their own tale. Upon this perilous and deceitful coast, one dark and tempestuous night a thousand years ago, an entire family would seem to have lost their lives by shipwreck. The bodies were laid side by side in these only too significant cavities; the oratory or "chapel" was built as a monument by their relatives, with, in addition, upon the highest point of the hill, a beacon or sort of rude lighthouse, with the maintenance of which the priest and his household were charged. On this lone little North Lancashire promontory, where no sound is ever heard but that of the sea, the heart is touched well-nigh as deeply as by the busiest scenes of Liverpool commerce.

[41] Thus in conformity with their general architectural
practice, and as expressed in the Anglo-Saxon word for "to
build"--_getymbrian_.

The church architecture of the Norman times has plenty of examples in Lancashire. It is well known also that many modern churches occupy old Norman and even Saxon sites, though nothing of the original structure has been preserved. The remains in question usually consist, as elsewhere, of the massive pillars always employed by the Norman architects for the nave, or of the ornamented arch which it was their custom to place at the entrance of the choir. Examples of Norman pillars exist at Colne, Lancaster, Hawkshead, Cartmel, Whalley, and Rochdale; the last-named, with the arches above, bringing to mind the choir of Canterbury Cathedral; at Clitheroe we find a chancel-arch; and at the cheerful and pretty village of Melling, eleven miles north-west of Lancaster, a Norman doorway, equalled perhaps in merit by another at Bispham, near Blackpool. Chorley parish church also declares itself of Norman origin, and at Blackburn are preserved various sculptured stones, plainly from Norman tools, and which belonged to the church now gone, as rebuilt or restored in the De Lacy times. The most ancient ecclesiastical building in Lancashire is Stede, or Styd, Chapel, a mile and a half north of the site of Ribchester. The period of the erection would appear to be that of Stephen, thus corresponding with the foundation of Furness Abbey. The windows are narrow lancet; the doors, though rather pointed, are enriched with Norman ornaments; the floor is strewed with ancient gravestones. In this quiet little place divine service is still, or was recently, held once a month.

Whalley Church, as we have it to-day--a building commemorative in site of the introduction of the Christian faith into this part of England--dates apparently, in its oldest portion--the pillars in the north aisle--from the twelfth century. The choir is a little later, probably of about 1235, from which time forwards it is evident that building was continued for quite 200 years, so that Whalley, like York Minster, is an epitome of architectural progress. The sedilia and piscina recall times antecedent to the Reformation. Every portion of the church is crowded with antiquities, many of them heraldic; very specially inviting among them are the stalls in the chancel, eighteen in number, transferred hither from the conventual church at the time of the spoliation. The luxuriant carving of the abbot's stall is in itself enough to repay an artist's journey. At the head of one of the compartments of the east window we have the Lancastrian rose; the flower of course tinctured gules, and almost the only representation of it in the county:

"Let him that is no coward, nor no flatterer,
But dare maintain the party of the truth,
Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me."

I _Henry VI._, ii. 4.

The floral badge of the house of Lancaster, it may be well to say, is the purely heraldic rose, the outline being conventionalised, as is the case also with the white rose of York. When used as the emblem of England, and associated with the thistle and the shamrock, the queen of flowers is represented as an artist would draw it--_i.e._ truthfully to nature, or with stalk, leaves, and buds, the petals still, as in the Lancastrian, of a soft crimson hue, "rose-colour" emphatically. The titles of the various subjects are all in old black letter.

The history of Cartmel Church reads like a romance. The original building was of earlier date than the Conquest, but changes subsequently made bring it very considerably forwards--up indeed to the time of Edward III. It was then that the windows of the south aisle of the chancel were inserted, and painted as usual in that glorious art-epoch, as shown by the few portions which remain. Other portions of the coloured glass were probably brought from the priory when broken up by the unhallowed hands of Henry VIII., under whose rule the church was threatened with a similar fate, but spared, in answer to the cry of the parishioners, who were allowed to purchase it at an indulgent price, with the loss of the roof of the chancel. Thus laid open to the rain and snow, these were allowed to beat into it for eighty years, with results still plainly visible upon the woodwork. A partial restoration of the fabric was then effected, and within these last few years every part has been put in perfect order.

The ground-plan of this interesting old church is that of a Greek cross. The nave, sixty-four feet in length (Furness exceeding it by only a few inches), leads us through angular pillars, crowned with the plain abacus, to a choir of unusual proportionate magnitude; and here, in contrast to the pointed nave-arches, the form changes to round, while the faces are carved.

In one of the chapels to which the chancel-arches lead there is some fine perpendicular work. Similar windows occur in the transepts; and elsewhere there are examples of late decorated. The old priory-stalls, twenty-six in number, are preserved here, as at Whalley.

Externally, Cartmel Church presents one of the most curious architectural objects existing in Lancashire, the tower being placed diagonally to the body of the edifice, a square crossways upon a square, as if turned from its first and proper position half-way round. What particular object was in view, or what was the motive for this unprecedented deviation from the customary style of building,--a parallel to which, in point of the singularity, is found, perhaps, only in Wells Cathedral,--does not appear. We owe to it, however, four pillars of great beauty and strength, necessarily placed at the points of the intersection of the transepts.

The interior of the church is encrusted with fine monuments, many of them modern, but including a fair number that give pleasure to the antiquary. The most ancient belong to a tomb upon the north side of the altar, within a plain arch, and inscribed, upon an uninjured slab of gray marble, in Longobardic characters, _Hic jacet Frator Willemus de Walton, Prior de Cartmel_. Opposite this there will be found record of one of the celebrated old local family of Harrington--probably the Sir John who in 1305, when Edward I. was bound for Scotland, was summoned by that monarch to meet him at Carlisle. An effigy of the knight's lady lies abreast of that of the warrior; the arch above it is of pleasing open work, covered with the grotesque figures of which the monks were so fond.

Had exact annals been preserved of early church-building in Lancashire in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, they would tell most assuredly of many important foundations. The beginning of Eccles Church, near Manchester, on the west, is referred by the archæologists to about the year 1120, but probably it is one of the two mentioned in "Domesday Book" in connection with Manchester. The first distinct reference to Eccles occurs in the "Coucher Book" of Whalley Abbey, or about thirty years later than 1120. The Whalley monks held large estates both in Eccles and the neighbourhood, with granaries, etc.,--the modern "Monton" is probably a contraction of "Monks' Town," and the very name is thought to indicate a church settlement. Ecclesiastical relics of age quite, or nearly, corresponding are found also near Preston, especially in the tower and chancel near the church of Walton-le-Dale, the former of no great elevation, but very strong, buttressed and embattled. Placed in a skilfully chosen position on the crest of a little hill near the confluence of the Darwen with the Ribble, the aspect of the old place is distinctly picturesque; the site at the same moment explaining the local appellation of "Low Church,"--the Anglo-Saxon _low_ or _law_ denoting an isolated eminence, as in the case of Cheshire Werneth Low and Shuttlings Low. The date assigned to this ancient tower is 1162; to about thirty years after which time the oldest existing portions of Samlesbury, a few miles distant, appear to belong, the relics of the original here including the baptismal font. Didsbury Church, near Manchester, represents a chapel built about 1235, originally for the private use of the lord of the manor and a few families of local distinction, but a century afterwards made parochial.[42]

[42] The existing church dates only from 1620, and in many of
its details only from 1852 and 1855.

There are numerous indications also of ecclesiastical energy, if not of enthusiasm, temp. Edward III., to which period seem to belong the choir of Rochdale Church, with its rich window tracery, the choir, probably, of Burnley Church, and perhaps the older portions of Wigan Church. As happens with many others, the history of the last-named is very broken. A church existed at Wigan in 1246, but the larger portion of the present pile belongs to two centuries later. That it cannot be the original is proved by the monument to the memory of Sir William Bradshaigh and the unfortunate lady, his wife, the principal figure in the legend of Mab's, or Mabel's cross. The knight is cross-legged, in coat of mail, and in the act of unsheathing his sword; the lady is veiled, with hands uplifted and conjoined as if in prayer. The deaths of these two occurred about the time of the Flemish weavers' settling in Lancashire, and of Philippa's intercession for the burghers of Calais.

Manchester "old church," since 1847 the "Cathedral," was founded, as before stated, in 1422, the last year of Henry V. and first of Henry VI.--that unhappy sovereign whose fate reflects so dismally upon the history of Lancashire faithfulness. The site had previously been occupied by an edifice of timber, portions of which are thought to have been carried away and employed in the building of certain of the old halls for which the neighbourhood was long noted, the arms of the respective families (who, doubtless, were contributors to the cost of the new structure) being displayed in different parts. But there does not appear to be any genuine ground for the belief; and at a period when oak timber was so readily procurable as in the time of Henry VI., it is scarcely probable that men who could afford to build handsome halls for their abode would care to introduce second-hand material, unless in very small quantity, and then merely as commemorative of the occasion. Choice of a quarry by the builders of the new church was not in their power. They were constrained to use the red-brown friable sandstone of the immediate vicinity, still plainly visible here and there by the river-side. The exterior of the building has thus required no little care and cost to preserve, to say nothing of the injury done by the smoke of a manufacturing town. There was a time when Thoresby's quotation from the Canticles in reference to St. Peter's at Leeds would have been quite as appropriate in regard to the Manchester "Cathedral"--"I am black, but comely." The style of the building, with its square and pinnacled tower, 139 feet high, is the florid Gothic of the time of the west front and south porch of Gloucester. The interior, in its loftiness and elaborate fretwork, its well-schemed proportions and ample windows, excites the liveliest admiration. The chancel-screen is one for an artist to revel in; the tabernacle work is, if possible, more beautiful yet.

The second best of the old Lancashire ecclesiastical interiors belongs to Sefton, near Liverpool, a building of the time of Henry VIII., upon the site of a pre-Conquest church. The screen, which contains sixteen stalls, presents a choice example of carved work. There is also a fine carved-canopy over the pulpit, though time with the latter has been pitiless. Striking architectural details are also plentiful with, in addition, some remarkable monuments of Knights Templars with triangular shields. Sefton church is further distinguished as one of the few in Lancashire more than a hundred years old which possesses a spire, the favourite style of tower in the bygones having been the square, solid, and rather stunted--never in any degree comparable with the gems found in Somerset, or with the circular towers that give so much character to the churches of Norfolk and Suffolk. A very handsome octangular tower exists at Hornby, on the banks of the Lune, built about the middle of the sixteenth century. Winwick church, an ancient and far-seen edifice near Warrington, supplies another example of a spire; and at Ormskirk we have the odd conjunction of spire and square tower side by side. Leland makes no mention of the circumstance--one which could hardly have escaped his notice. The local tale which proposes to explain it may be dismissed. The probability is that the intention was to provide a place for the bells from Burscough Priory, some of the monuments belonging to which were also removed hither when the priory was dissolved.

Many remains show that in Lancashire, in the time of Henry VIII., the spirit of church extension was again in full flow. Indications of it occur at Warrington, Burnley, Colne, and St. Michael-le-Wyre, near Garstang, also in the aisles of Middleton Church, and in the towers of Rochdale, Haslingden, Padiham, and Warton, near Lancaster. Here, however, we must pause; the history of the old Lancashire churches treated in full would be a theme as broad and various as that of the lives and writings of its men of letters. There is one, nevertheless, which justly claims the special privilege of an added word, the very interesting little edifice called Langho Chapel, four miles from Blackburn, the materials of which it was built consisting of part of the wreck of Whalley Abbey. Sculptured stones, with heraldic shields and other devices, though much battered and disfigured, declare the source from which they were derived; and in the heads of some of the windows, which resemble the relics of others at the Abbey, are fragments of coloured glass in all likelihood of similar origin. The date of the building would seem to have been about 1557, though the first mention of it does not occur until 1575. How curious and suggestive are the reminders one meets with in our own country (comparing the small with the great), of the quarrying of the Coliseum by the masons of mediæval Rome!

In old halls, mansions, and manor-houses, especially of sixteenth-century style, Lancashire abounds. A few are intact, held, like Widnes House, by a descendant of the original owners; or preserved through transfer to some wealthy merchant or manufacturer from the town, who takes an equal pride in maintaining the integrity of all he found--a circumstance to which we are indebted for some of the most beautiful archæological relics the county possesses. On the contrary, as would be expected, the half-ruined largely predominate, and these in many cases are now devoted to ignoble purposes. A considerable number of stronger substance have been modernised, often being converted into what are sometimes disrespectfully called "farmhouses," as if the home of the agriculturist were not one of the most honourable in the land;--now and then they have been divided into cottages. Still, they are there; attractive very generally to the artist in their quaintness, always dear to the antiquary and historian, and interesting, if no more, to all who appreciate the fond care which clings to memorials of the past, whether personal or outside, as treasures which once lost can never be recovered. They tell of a class of worthy and industrious men who were neither barons nor vassals, who had good taste, and were fairly well off in purse, and loved field-sports--for a kennel for harriers and otter hounds is not rare,--who were hospitable, and generous, and mindful of the poor.

The history of these old halls is, in truth very often, the history of the aboriginal county families. As wealth increased, and abreast of it a longing for the refinements of a more elevated civilisation, the proprietors usually deserted them for a new abode; the primitive one became the "old," then followed the changes indicated, with departure, alas! only too often, of the ancient dignity.

In the far north a few remains occur which point to a still earlier period, or when the disposition to render the manorial home a fortress was very natural. Moats, or the depressions they once occupied, are common in all parts, even where there was least danger of attack. In the neighbourhood of Morecambe Bay the building was often as strong as a castle, as in the case of the old home of the Harringtons at Gleaston, two miles east of Furness Abbey. These celebrated ruins, which lie in a hollow in one of the valleys running seawards, are apparently of the fourteenth century, the windows in the lower storey being acutely pointed single lights, very narrow outside, but widely splayed within. Portions of three square towers and part of the curtain-wall connecting them attest, with the extent of the enclosure (288 feet by 170 where widest), that the ancient lords of Aldingham were alike powerful and sagacious. On the way to Gleaston, starting from Grange, a little south of the village of Allithwaite, Wraysholme tells of similar times, though all that now remains is a massive tower, the walls 3-1/2 feet thick as they rise from the sod. It was near Wraysholme, it will be remembered, that according to tradition and the ballad, the last of the English wolves was killed. The fine old tower of Hornby Castle, the only remaining portion of a stronghold commenced soon after the Conquest, is of much later date, having been built in or about 1520. That without being originally designed to withstand the attack of a violent enemy, more than one of these substantial old Lancashire private houses held its own against besiegers in the time of the civil wars is matter of well-known history. Lathom House (the original, long since demolished) has already been mentioned as the scene of the memorable discomfiture of Fairfax by Charlotte, Countess of Derby, the illustrious lady in whom loyalty and conjugal love were interwoven.

The Elizabethan halls so termed, though some of them belong to the time of James I., are of two distinct kinds,--the half-timbered, black-and-white, or "magpie," and the purely stone, the latter occurring in districts where wood was less plentiful or more costly. Nothing in South Lancashire, and in the adjacent parts of Cheshire, sooner catches the eye of the stranger than the beautiful old patterned front of one of the former;--bars vertical and horizontal, angles and curves, mingling curiously but always elegantly, Indian ink upon snow, many gables breaking the sky-line, while the entrance is usually by a porch or ornamental gateway, the windows on either side low but wide, with many mullions, and usually casemented. The features in question rivet the mind so much the more because of the proof given in these old half-timbered houses of the enduring vitality of the idea of the Gothic cathedral, and its new expression when cathedral-building ceased, in the subdued and modified form appropriate to English homes--the things next best, when perfect, to the fanes themselves. The gables repeat the high-pitched roof; the cathedral window, as to the rectangular portion, or as far as the spring of the arch, is rendered absolutely; the filagree in black-and-white, ogee curves appearing not infrequently, is a varied utterance of the sculpture; the pinnacles and finials, the coloured glass, and the porch complete the likeness. Anything that can be associated with a Gothic cathedral is thereby ennobled;--upon this one simple basis, the architecture we are speaking of becomes artistic, while its lessons are pure and salutary.

Drawing near, at the sides of the porch, are found seats usually of stone. In front, closing the entrance to the house, there is a strong oaken door studded with heads of great iron nails. Inside are chambers and corridors, many and varied, an easy and antique staircase leading to the single upper storey, the walls everywhere hidden by oaken panels grooved and carved, and in the daintier parts divided by fluted pilasters; while across the ceilings, which are usually low, run the ancient beams which support the floor above. So lavish is the employment of oak, that, when this place was built, surely one thinks a forest must have been felled. But those were the days of giant trees, the equals of which in this country will probably never be seen again, though in the landscape they are not missed. Inside, again, how cheery the capacious and friendly hearth, spanned by a vast arch; above it, not uncommonly, a pair of huge antlers that talk of joy in the chase. Inside, again, one gets glimpses of heraldic imagery, commemorative of ancient family honours, rude perhaps in execution, but redeemed by that greatest of artists, the Sunshine, that streaming through shows the colours and casts the shadows. Halls such as these existed until quite lately even in the immediate suburbs of Manchester, in the original streets of which town there were many black-and-white fronts, as to the present moment in Chester, Ludlow, and Shrewsbury. Some of the finest of those still remaining in the rural parts of Lancashire will be noticed in the next chapter. Our illustrations give for the present an idea of them. When gone to decay and draped with ivy, like Coniston Hall, the ancient home of the le Flemings, whatever may be the architecture, they become keynotes to poems that float over the mind like the sound of the sea. In any case there is the sense, when dismemberment and modernising have not wrought their mischief, that while the structure is always peculiarly well fitted for its situation, the outlines are essentially English. It may be added that in these old Lancashire halls and mansions the occurrence of a secret chamber is not rare. Lancashire was always a stronghold of Catholicism, and although the hiding-places doubtless often gave shelter to cavaliers and other objects of purely political enmity, the popular appellation of "priest's room," or "priest's hole," points plainly to their more usual service. They were usually embedded in the chimney-stacks, communication with a private cabinet of the owner of the house being provided for by means of sliding shutters. Very curious and interesting refuges of this character exist to this day at Speke, Lydiate, Widnes, and Stonyhurst, and in an old house in Goosenargh, in the centre wall of which, four feet thick, there are two of the kind. In a similar "hole" at Mains Hall, in the parish of Kirkham, tradition says that Cardinal Allen was once concealed.