Garston / Gahersteng / Gerstan / Gerston

No individual entry for Garston found in the Domesday survey. Gastrell (1845- ) reports that the chapel at Garston "was for many years ruinated and disused [...] a font being found among ye Rubbish" and suggests that no service had been permormed in the chapel "since ye Reformation]. The Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire (XL, 1890: 125, 130) quotes Gastrell's text and adds that the base of one of columns of the original church "was dug up about 35 years ago, in the music pew, and the lare Rev. John Gibson set the font upon it." This same source notes that, if anything from Gastrell time was kept, it must have been re-cut. The entry for this parish in the Victoria County History (Lancaster, vol. 3, 1907) notes: "St. Wilfrid's […] chapel existed at an early date; and appears to have been considered parochial, even if not an independent parish church […] From remains of the mediaeval building discovered during the demolition of the eighteenth-century chapel in 1888, it appears that it dated from the time of Edward I, and was repaired or practically rebuilt about 1500 […] The Commonwealth church surveyors found the 'very ancient' chapel in ruin and decay, and without an incumbent. They considered it fit to be made a parish church […] The old building was entirely demolished, a font being found in the rubbish. The new chapel of St. Michael, a plain but substantial stone building, was erected on the site." [NB: Garston appears to be, with Hale, the only other township of Childwall with a parochial church or chapel; we have no information on the present whereabouts of the old font]