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."