A treelined view showing St Cuthbert’s church and the Hesketh Arms public house.
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St Cuthbert’s has been a place of continuous Christian worship for over 825 years with successive buildings used on this site. The present church of St Cuthbert dates from 1739 with substantial alterations in the nineteenth and twentieth Centuries. It is believed that St Cuthbert’s was one church relating to a series of churches erected to mark the resting place for the bones of St Cuthbert as they were moved throughout the region. Wherever the bones were rested for the night a church was erected and this would place a church on the site from the 9th Century. This dates the site back to Anglo Saxon times and possibly making St Cuthbert’s the oldest Christian site in Sefton.
Originally, the Hesketh Arms was called the Black Bull but changed its name around 1845. It was renamed after the local manorial families the Heskeths of Meols Hall. One famous innkeeper of the Black Bull was William Sutton who is credited with founding Southport in 1792.