tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">[24] The woods sold by Henry the Eighth in 1544 were the residue of the lord's forest; he being the inheritor of the Fee.

Now we may reasonably suppose this demesne to have been planted in Kirktown, as the present village came to be called, where the meadows were rich and the soil deep for ploughing, but distant from, and below the ancient line of road with its scattered homesteads. The demesne made a village nucleus; for all the accessories of a manor house would spring up about it. We know the lord's brewery was not far off, at Kelbergh, where springs—beside the holy one—are still abundant.[25] In a rental, dated 1375[26] that concerned the part of Grasmere then held by the Hotham and Pedwardyn families, it is stated that "Richard Smyth holds the forge and should render 12d and 1d," with the addition that he pays 2s 0d per annum for "Kelebergh." From another document we learn that certain tenants of Grasmere pay an unspecified sum for the brewery of Keldbergh.

This manorial centre was united to the high line of road on the other side of the valley by several ways. One, a footpath, still passes hard by Kirk How, a now disused smithy being upon it. Two others approach and meet to cross Raise Beck together by White Bridge, the name indicative of a stone fabric at a time when timber was commoner. Here the village pinfold still stands.

What more natural than that the church should be added to this central group, and at a time perhaps when enlarged space and entire rebuilding of an existing edifice required to be done? The site by the river would afford deep soil for burial. To such a change of site (supposing it were made) there would naturally be opposition from some quarter; whence the tradition.

This, however, is but conjecture. The fabric of the present church shows no feature that is of a certainty older than the introduction of manorial rule into Grasmere; while it may be as late as the fourteenth century. But before considering the question of its age, it will be well to point out other evidences of the existence of a church in the valley before record began, and then pass on to such scant records as time has left to us.