Tarleton / Tharilton

No individual entry for Tarleton found in the Domesday survey. The entry for this township in the Victoria County History (Lancaster, vol. 6, 1911) notes: "The old chapel of St. Mary [...] is supposed to stand on the site of the earlier chapel of St. Helen. The [present] building is the one erected in 1719 [...] there is a good 18th-century circular font on a fluted pedestal" in this church. The VCH (ibid.) further notes that the old chapel "existed in the first part of the 13th century" and gives "Cockersand Chartul. ii, 462." as reference; it further reports that, access to the parish being thwarted by "an arm of the sea", the priest here would administer some services in the chapel. There is no register of baptisms before 1719, though. Hartwell & Pevsner (2009) note: "Font. C18, a graceful little baluster." [NB: H&P (ibid.) mention that a pre-Reformation chapel of ease existed here before the early-18th century church was built; it may have had a baptismal font, but we have no information on it]. The Hesketh Bank, Becconsall, Tarleton website [http://www.heskethbank.com/home/stmarys/index.html] reports: "the missing font has been restored to the building and placed in front of the simple apsical sanctuary."