St Bega's feast came once a yeare but her relics were on show all the time and would be the main attraction for the pilgrim. She was an Irish saint who crossed the sea about 650 to found a nunnery at St. Bees, which was destroyed in the Viking invasion while of personal names like Bega in the pre-Norman period e.g., Begga in France in 698, a bell called Bega in InguIf's Crowland Chronicle, and Begu in Bede. The parish takes its name from Bega, who founded a small nunnery here about the yeare 650, where a church was subsequently built, and dedicated in her honour.

In ancient evidences, the priory and parish are variously called Kirkby-betok, Kirkby-Begock, and Begoth, the latter is derived from Beg-og, which, in the Irish language, signifies little young. The earliest documents connected with this place call it Kirby Beagogh, (vul Beacock) the market town of St. Bega; and St. Bees, the saint's house or houses, names given to it after the Irish saint resided there.

By what name it was called when "pillaged by the Danes" or "fortified, (according to Cook) at all the convenient landing places by the Romans," or when the Bell Teing was lighted on Bell Hill, towards which the road from this place and to Whitehaven is almost as perfect as when the Belfires blazed, or the Druidical rites were performed in the temple, supposed to have been where the castle at Whitehaven now stands, there is no record to show. From its favourable site to have been peopled by the inhabitants of Beckermet and Drigg, (Derigh, the place of oaks) when destroyed by the Danish invaders. It appears to have been a place of some note for the making of salt at the Conquest, as the lordship of Clifton, in Westmorland, was granted on the following tenure - that a man and two horses should be sent annually to St. Bees for salt, and so late as the 35th of Henry VIII one Henry Palmer came here for two horse loads.

The Viking raids did not start until c.795 in Ireland, and until 836 were mainly hit-and-run strikes on the coastal areas. But then the Vikings did start to winter in Ireland, and a permanent settlement was established at Dublin between 840 and 845. She was promised in marriage to a Viking prince "son of the king of Norway and fled across the Irish sea to land in this remote spot on the Cumbrian coast where the basic legend of St Bega which survived to or grew up in early Norman period. Bega crosses to Northumbria, meets king Oswald and Saint Aidan, founds Hartlepool. She later hands the nunnery over to St. Hilda and retires to Calcacester. Hilda died in 680, which the translation in the decade or so after 1140 she was lead by a vision. The thirty years after 850, when the Vikings were establishing themselves in Ireland, provide a very appropriate setting for St Bega's flight to Cumbria and heathen Vikings from Man and the Isles start to raid the north-west coast of England and a nobleman Elfred Birihtulfing, fleeing from pirates, comes over the western mountains to become the vassal of St. Cuthbert.

One of the two possible church dedications to St Bega in Cumberland, Ennerdale, is probably late and consequential upon the grant of that territory to the priory. But the other, Bassenthwaite, has no known connection with St Bees priory. The church was given by Waltheof lord of Allerdale to Jedburgh abbey. The earliest forms of the name, in 1291 and 1302, are Beokirke and Bechokirk. The earliest form is probably Kylbeuhoc in a charter of c.1200. That charter is witnessed by Gilbert parson of Kilbucho, and also by Cospatric hermit of that place - possibly Cospatric "Gillebecoc." Local tradition also connects St Bega's name with a spring on the north side of the Pow Beck Valley, lying in a thicket of brambles below the place where the modern Whitehaven road reaches the crest of the hill, possibly associated with the well, and partly linked to it by a curious modern strip of disused ground, which may be an ancient track, is the traditional site of St Michael's chapel on the other side of the Whitehaven road, mentioned in one medieval charter. The third miracle concerns Godard the knight "who guarded the fortification in Egremont" - evidently Godard de Boivill who held Millom of William le Meschin for the service of one knight, and appears as Godard the Steward in an early charter.

ST. BEES, (or Kirkby Beacock), a parish in the ward of Allerdale-above-Derwent, in the county of Cumberland, three miles to the northwest of Egremont. It is situated near the coast of the Irish Sea, along which it extends about ten miles, and was the largest parish in the county until recently, when Loweswater was constituted a parochial chapelry, with independent jurisdiction. It contains the chapelries of Ennerdale, Eskdale, Hensingham, Nether Wasdale, Wasdale Head, and Whitehaven, the last being a market town and seaport; and the townships of Kinniside, Lowside-Quarter, Preston-Quarter, Rottington, Sandwith, and Weddiker.

At the foundation of the priory, the Norman monks were clearly taking over as a going concern a centre of Bega-veneration. The name of the last witness of the foundation charter, Gillebecoc, speaks of a priest, possibly hereditary, who was the servant of that cult. It means the devotee of Beghoc. Although the full name does not occur before the time of Richard I, it includes the same personal name Beghoc, which according to the place-name experts was Irish and therefore presumably originating in the period of Scandinavian settlement.The name of the village, Kirkby Becok, indicates an early dedication of the church to Bega.

Mannix & Whellan, History, Gazetteer and Directory of Cumberland, 1847