Kendal Parish Church

Situated in Kirkland the Parish Church is dedicated to the Holy Trinity.

It is reputed to be one of the widest Parish Churches in the country and dates from the early thirteenth century, though it occupies the site of a much earlier Church. A record in the Domesday Book, and the shaft of an Anglian Cross, housed in the Parr Chapel and dated at approximately AD 850, suggest a very early beginning.

Saxon Period

On the site of the present parish (possibly where the Nave is now) a Saxon Church stood which was, along with the one at Kirkby Lonsdale, mentioned in the Domesday Booke. Both towns were given the prefix “Cherchebi” as a result and they were the Saxon mother churches to chapels and other smaller places of worship in surrounding settlements. At that time it was probably made of wood, wattle and daub and a thatched roof.

Norman Period

Following the conquest of England by the Duke of Normandy, the Baron of Kendal, Ivo de Talbois, is likely to have rebuilt the church on a grander scale following the construction of the Castle but none of the Norman church remains.

The Baron presented wholesale the tithes of his Westmorland estates to St. Mary’s Abbey at York (founded 1056), subject to the duty of providing for the service of the Churches. It appears from an inquisition of Ad quo damnum taken at Appleby before the Sheriff, on Thursday next after the Epiphany in the year 1302, that it was found to be “of no damage to the King or any other to appropriate the Church of Kirkby-inKendal to the Abbot and Convent of St. Mary’s York". In the meantime William de Lancaster II. the 6th Baron of Kendal had made a munificent grant of land to the Church, the Glebe and Vicar’s fields, reciting the dedication as "To the Holy Trinity".