Page:Lancashire Legends, Traditions, Pageants, Sports, Etc., with an Appendix Containing a Rare Tract.djvu/91

 partly modern, but resting on an ancient octagonal base. The church was probably built soon after the Conquest by Orm, the proprietor of Hatton. A local tradition, of no well-ascertained authority, represents it as having been erected at the cost of two maiden ladies [? sisters] named Orm, who, being unable to decide whether it should have a tower or a spire, accommodated their differences by giving it both. A more probable tradition states that the spire was attached to the original edifice, and that, on the suppression of Burscough Priory, the tower was built for the reception of eight of the bells taken thence, the remainder of the priory bells being removed to Croston Church. The tenor bell at Ormskirk, which is said to have been the third at Burscough, has a Latin inscription in old English letters, "J. S. de Burscough, Esq., and E. my wife, made [this bell] in honour of the Trinity. R.B. 1497."

Roby observes that this tradition is an idle and impertinent invention, as the old ladies might each have had her way by building a tower and surmounting it by a spire. But who can say whether, in self-will, one lady would like to see her tower capped, surmounted, and so to speak, extinguished, by the spire of her sister? He suggests as a more probable solution that at the dissolution of the Priory of Burscough, temp. Henry VIII., the bells of its conventual church were removed to Ormskirk; and, as the small tower beneath the spire was not sufficiently capacious to receive them, the present square steeple was added. This suggestion receives some confirmation in the fact that the tenor bell of Ormskirk church, said to have been previously the third bell at Burscough Priory, bears some apparent proof of its translation. Round the circle below the ear is the following inscription, all, except the founder's initials, in black