In the middle of the eleventh century, on the reliable testimony of the so-called Domesday Survey, we have positive evidence that in Lancashire there were then at least a dozen churches; however many more were left unnoticed, or had existed and been destroyed by the ravages of the Danes, we can only conjecture, but there are not wanting indications in that direction which leave little room for doubt that, at all events, some half-dozen others are wanting to complete the list. The Great Survey was not in any way intended to furnish such a list, and its object might have been attained almost without the mention of a single ecclesiastical building; it is therefore not improbable that other churches existed, of which no trace, nor even tradition, has been handed down to us. Beginning with the early churches in the north of the county, and coming down to the Mersey, we shall be able in some measure to trace the local rise and development of the Christian religion in the county. In the Lancashire part of Lonsdale no church is named as a building, but as we have after the word Lancaster[171] _Church Lancaster_ (_Chercaloncastre_), it is evident that this ancient town had at that time, at all events, its church (to which we shall refer again hereafter); and from the fact that to the four manors of Bentham (in Yorkshire), Wennington, Tatham and Tunstall were attached three churches, it is clear that not less than two of them were in Lancashire, and these were at Tatham and Tunstall. The church at Tatham, like many others of these early foundations, has now no village near to it, but stands at the extreme north of the parish; it is mentioned in the _Valor_ of 1291, and it has been more than once rebuilt, but a Norman doorway remains, and an archway said to belong to the Saxon period. Tunstall was the site of a small Roman station (see p. 36), and therefore the more likely to be afterwards used as the settlement of a Saxon community. The early history of this church is obscure, but it was recognised in 1291, and shortly afterwards appears to have belonged to the Abbot of Croxton Keyrial, in Leicestershire; it has been at least three times restored; it was originally dedicated to St. Michael, but the more modern dedication is to St. John. Thurland Castle, which is not far from the church, is supposed to have taken its name from a Saxon Thane. At Kirkby Ireleth one can scarcely avoid coming to the conclusion that at some time during the Saxon Heptarchy a church existed, though all material trace of it was soon afterwards swept away. The present parish church is dedicated to St. Cuthbert, who, in A.D. 685, had given to him by the King of Northumbria "the land called Cartmel and all the Britons there" ("terram quæ vocatur Cartmel et omnes Britannos cum eo"),[172] and as Kirkby Ireleth is only some ten miles from that place, it is at least probable that here Cuthbert erected a church, which afterwards being destroyed, left only a tradition of its founder.