By historian Roger Bingham of Ackenthwaite:

“HARD to find and all the better for it,” commented Pevsner’s 2005 Architectural Guide to Cumbria about Cartmel Fell Church, which dates from 1504.

In 1776 the historians Nicholson and Burn merely commented ‘no road’.

A century later, an historical expedition reported fulsomely on its ‘discoveries’, which included a rare mediaeval crucifix which had later served as the vestry poker.

It was fitting, the 1875 antiquarians contended, that it was one of only five English churches, dedicated to St. Anthony as he was the patron of hermits, for which a cell appeared to have existed above the chancel. It was also a place where "basket makers and charcoal burners as hazels still grow on the fell."

St. Anthony was, moreover, the ‘guardian of pigs’, and one with a pointed snout appears in the east window next to a scene of holy matrimony in which a bridegroom, "adorned with long flaxen hair, a black velvet bodice laced with gold," holds hands with his more meekly dressed bride. Though they lacked documentary evidence, the historians contended that the treasured glass must have come from Cartmel Priory.