Witherslack is a rural village situated between Whitbarrow and the east bank of the river Winster, five miles north-east of grange over Sands. Witherslack Hall one time seat of the Earl of Derby is now a school.
     One must assume that the locals of Witherslack must be proud of their noble ancestors. The first Earl's name appears here in 1487 when all the lands hereabouts were made over to him by Henry VII. In much later years, the 14th Earl was three times Prime Minister. His son Lord Stanley of Preston was Governor-General of Canada from 1888, together with Lord Mayor of Liverpool, Chancellor of Liverpool University, and Chancellor of Oxford.
     St Mary's Chapel stood near Witherslack Hall, but was in such a ruinous state in 1664, that Dean Barwick, who died in 1664 (and is buried in St Paul's Cathedral) bequeathed monies for repairs to the chapel, together with money for a new burial ground, for until then the dead had had to be carried across the sands to the mother church of Beetham for burial.
     St Paul's Church was built on ground donated by the Earl of Derby...which was later consecrated by the Bishop of Chester in 1671. It has a fine canopied pulpit, once a three decker, and a charming marble figure of a baby boy asleep. Like the small school, the church was a gift of John Barwick, a Royalist who became Dean of St Paul's. His shield will be seen in one of the windows, and has the red and gold rose given him by Charles II for his loyalty.
     Peter Barwick was the King's physician, and a friend of William Harvey. He was one of the few doctors who did not run away from the plague in 1665. Every day, he attended old St Paul's to minister to miserable sufferers, and when the great Fire of London destroyed his home, he lived very simply at Westminsiter. He was blind for the last eleven years of his life, but even then advised poor people free of charge.
     Peter Barwick, the executor of Dean Barwick's will, further endowed funds to provide an income for a school, apprenticeship's dowry for the local maids, together with fuel for the aged and infirm.
     An outlaw who lies somewhere among the wooded hills is Sir Thomas Broughton, who joined Lambert Simnel's rebellion against Henry VII and had to flee for his life. It is said that for months he was hiding in a cave hereabouts, and that his tenants took him food. He died in hiding, and was buried in the forest.