A record from 1146 gives credence to that theory as in that year Henry Murdac, Archbishop of York gave the Byland monks permission to build a chapel at Scaltun‘owing to the divers fatigue in which the parishioners endure in coming from Scaltun’. [to worship at the church at Byland on the Moor]. Abbot Roger ordered that ‘there should be conveyed in a wain the lesser bell of the mother church at Byland to the said daughter church at Scaltun.
The sundial cannot be accurately dated but Nicholas Pevsner refers to it as Anglo-Danish which raises the possibility of Danish lordship during the 10th century followed by that of Aschil prior to the Norman conquest. No church was recorded at either of the Scaltun manors in 1086 and as Aschil held the one adjacent to Begesland which he also held it is possible that the people of both manors were attending services at a Saxon church at Begesland over a hundred years before the arrival of the Savignian monks in 1142.
