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.