Village of Cartmel, Cumbria

In the year 79, of our era, being the last year of the reign of the Emperor Vespasian, Roman General Agricola, in his second campaign in Britain, contending with the Brigantes, drove them through their thick woods and morasses, till he reached the southern shores of Morecambe Bay; and, having with difficulty passed over the then low-lying sandbanks and quicksands of the estuary, for the first time led the Roman legions into Cartmel. This was the very year in which the city of Pompeii was overwhelmed by an eruption of Vesuvius, and was just 9 years Vespasian's son Titus had taken and utterly destroyed Jerusalem.

The first religious use of the village of Cartmel occurred in 677, when King Egfrith of Northumbria gifted the village, along with all its Britons, to St Cuthbert, Bishop of Lindisfarne.

June 1183--Henry the Younger dies in the midst of the rebellion. He had vowed to go on crusade (the breaking of which vow led him to have his dying body taken from his bed and laid on bed with ashes, with a stone pillow, a hair shirt on his back, and noose around his neck). He kissed the ring that his father had sent him as a token of peace and died. Before dying he asked William Marshal to fulfil his vow.
1183-86--William was on Crusade. Promised Templars that he would end his day amongst them and buried in a Templar house.
1187-89- Continued raids, sieges, battles, conferences and truces between Henry II and Philip Augustus.
1186 -William Marshal Enters Henry II's mesnie (i.e. household).
1187 -William receives the grant of a Fief, Cartmel.
1188 - William founded at Cartmel a Priory of Canons Regular of St. Augustine. He ordained that it should be free from all the subjection to any other religious house, and that at the death of every Prior, the Canons should elect two of their own Fellows, and then present to him (their Patron) and his Heirs; that he who had his assent to be elected should be their Prior. Priory should never be made an Abbey.

St. Guthbert appeared in a vision to the priory's architect telling him to build between two springs flowing in the opposite direction. The architect had laid the foundation stones on an appropriate site, but the next morning they had been flung to a lower field where two springs were found. This is where the church stands today.