A few miles to the South of Wigan is Winwick, an ancient parish. The church is dedicated to St Oswald, martyr king of Northumbria, patron of St Aidan. In AD 642 he was killed in battle by the last great pagan Saxon king, Penda of Mercia, at a place called Maserfelth. 1/5

It's often claimed that this was near Oswestry, and Bede's history, describing Oswald's warfare as self defence, is simply Northumbrian propaganda. But if Winwick's claims are true, battle was met within the borders of his realm. And next to the M6 is a famous holy well. 2/5

Bede devotes several chapters to the miraculous tales told bearing witness to the sanctity of this place. Soil was gathered from where the king was slain in such a quantity, as relics, that a spring was unearthed.
Just to the North is Makerfield... perhaps Bede's Maserfelth. 3/5

Book 3, Chapters IX - XIII of Bede's Ecclesiastical History:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/38326/38326-h/38326-h.html#toc141
Illustrated, the well, and a Saxon carving from the church, of Oswald held upside down by his Mercian pagan captors, about to be dismembered.
A thousand years later another king was killed...
4/5

The Restoration Rector of Winwick was the royalist Richard Sherlock, uncle of the celebrated Bishop Wilson, eighteenth century Manx theocrat.
Sherlock wrote an enduring classic of seventeenth century piety, on the catechism "The Practical Christian..."
https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Practical_Christian.html?id=wzQPAAAAIAAJ
5/5