Biscopham was the appellation bestowed on the district now called Bispham at and before the era of William the Conqueror, in whose survey it appears as embracing within its boundaries eight carucates of arable land. The original name is simply a compound of the two Anglo-Saxon words _Biscop_, a bishop, and _Ham_, a habitation or settlement, the signification of the whole being obviously the ‘Bishop’s town,’ or ‘residence.’ Hence it is clear that some episcopal source must be looked to as having been the means of conferring the peculiar title on the place, and fortunately for the investigator, the annals of history furnish a ready clue to what otherwise might have proved a question difficult, or perhaps impossible, of satisfactory solution. In a previous chapter it has been noted that for long after the reign of Athelstan Amounderness was held by the See of York, and nothing can be more natural than to suppose, when regarding that circumstance in conjunction with the significance of the name under discussion, that the archbishops of the diocese had some residence on the soil of Bispham. It is quite possible, however, that there may have been merely a station of ecclesiastics who collected the rents and tithes of the Hundred on behalf of the bishopric, acting in fact as stewards and representatives of the archbishop for the time being, but in either case it is evident that the name and, consequently, the town, are of diocesan origin, doubtless associated with the proprietorship above mentioned. The presence of priests in residence within the manor of Bispham would necessarily lead to the establishment there of some chapel or oratory, and the absence of any allusion to such a structure by the investigators of William I. seems, at the first glance, a serious obstacle to the episcopal theory, but Bispham was located between the two Danish colonies of Norbreck and Warbreck, a people whose hostility to all religious houses was almost proverbial, and hence it is scarcely likely that a church so conveniently situated, as that of Bispham would be, could long escape spoliation and destruction after the prelates of York had removed their protection from the neighbourhood, at some date anterior to the arrival of the Normans in England. The ravages of the Danes indeed, throughout the Hundred of Amounderness are usually the reasons assigned why the district was relinquished by the See of York, so that the non-existence of a sacred pile of any description at the period of the Domesday Survey, is in no way contradictory of such a building having been there, at an earlier epoch. At the close of the Saxon dynasty the number of acres in cultivation in the manor of Bispham exceeded those of the five next largest manors in the Fylde by two hundred, thus Staining, Layton, Singleton, Marton, and Thornton, each contained six hundred acres of arable soil, whilst Bispham had eight hundred in a similar condition.