John Porter

“ The marine esplanade and the firm sands left by the receding tide were ever alive with crowds of people, who either for health or pleasure, or a combination of the two, had arrived in the watering-place. The bathing vans were still unequal to the demands on their accommodation, and many were compelled to dispense with their decorous shelter, and unrobe themselves on the more secluded parts of the beach. ”

“ In 869 Lancashire was again visited by a dreadful famine, and many of the people in every part of the county fell victims either to the dearth itself or the fatal disorders following in its train. Those who were fortunate enough to escape the wholesale destruction of the scourge suffered so severely from the merciless massacres of the Danes that at the accession of Alfred the Great, in 871, our Hundred was but sparsely populated. During the reign of that illustrious monarch England was divided into counties, which again were subdivided into Hundreds. ”

“ In accordance with the royal mandate, which was circulated in secret, the Anglo-Saxon populace of the villages and farms of the Fylde, as elsewhere, rose at the appointed day upon the unprepared and unsuspecting Northmen, barbarously massacring old and young, male and female alike. Great must have been the slaughter in districts like our own, where from the Danes having been established for so many generations and its proximity to the coast and the estuaries of Wyre and Ribble, a safe landing and a friendly soil would be insured, and attract numbers of their countrymen from Scandinavia. ”

“ We hasten to lay at your Majesty’s feet the dutiful allegiance of the inhabitants of the youngest Town and Port in all your Majesty’s dominions, which dates its existence from the very year in which your Majesty first ascended the Throne of these realms; and which, from the barren and uninhabited sands of the Fylde of Lancashire, has already obtained some importance for its town of 3,000 inhabitants, its Watering-place, Harbour, and Railway, together with its College for the sons of clergymen and other gentlemen. ”

“ On hearing the signal, the whole of the gentlemen, however agreeably occupied, were compelled, under a penalty of one bottle of wine for each offence, to vacate the shore and betake themselves to their several hotels or apartments, whilst the ladies, after sufficient time had elapsed for any stray member of the sterner sex to get safely and securely housed, emerged singly or in small groups from the different doorways, and, hurrying down to the edge of the sea, quickly threw off their loose bathing robes, and in a moment were sporting amid the waves like a colony of nereids or mermaids. ”

“ There is nothing of local interest to recount during the period the Romans held the soil, but after their abdication, when the Anglo-Saxons violated their faith and traitorously seized a land which they had come professedly to protect, the Fylde began to evince symptoms of greater animation; villages sprang up in different spots on the open grounds or clearings in the woods; the solitary Roman settlement at Kirkham was appropriated and renamed by the new arrivals, and, perhaps, for the first time a population of numerical importance was established in the district. ”

“ Throughout the whole of the Saxon dynasty the mass of the inhabitants would be what were termed the “villani,” that is, a class forming a link between abject slavery and perfect independence. They were not bound to any master but to the soil on which they happened to be born, and on no plea were they permitted to leave such localities. To the lord of the manor each of the “villani” gave annually a certain portion of the produce of the ground he tilled, but beyond that they acknowledged no claim to the proceeds of their thrift by the large territorial proprietors. ”

“ The large mounds, or star-hills as they are called, which undulate the coast line from Lytham to South-Shore, are composed simply and purely of sand, covered over with a coarse species of herb, bearing the name of star-grass. Similar eminences at one time occupied the whole of the marine border of the Fylde, [127] but in many places the encroaching tide has not only annihilated the hills themselves, but even usurped their sites. The town of Fleetwood is erected on a foundation of sand, and several extensive mounds of that nature exist in its vicinity. ”

“ The act which decreed the building of workhouses for the employment of the poor, stated that if any one refused to enter those houses, or objected to perform his share of labour, no relief should be apportioned to him. There can be little doubt that workhouses sprang up at Poulton and in the other parishes of the Fylde about that date, as well as at Kirkham, but in their cases there are no bailiffs’ registers, or similar records, to fall back upon for proof as to the accuracy of the surmise, and consequently we are unable to speak with absolute certainty. ”

“ Ships of considerable size, freighted with cargoes of various sorts, found their way to those secluded havens, and even within the last few years, during high tides, vessels laden with grain have been berthed and unloaded in the narrow creek leading from Skippool bay, while bags of guano have often terminated their sea-voyages at Wardleys. A solitary warehouse, however, undated, but bearing on its battered exterior and decaying timbers the unmistakable stamp of time, is, at the present day, almost the only remaining witness to the former pretentions of the first named place. ”

“ Know that we have granted and by this our present charter confirm to our beloved in Christ the Abbot and Convent of Vale Royal, that they and their successors for ever shall have a market in each week on Thursday at their manor at Kirkham in the county of Lancaster, and also in each year a fair at the same town of five days duration, that is on the vigil, on the Day, and on the morrow of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, and on the two days succeeding; unless the market and fair be found injurious to neighbouring markets and fairs. ”

“ The paucity of the recruits attracted by the insurgent standard from our neighbourhood is easily to be accounted for, when it is remembered that for many years the county of Lancashire had enjoyed an immunity from strifes and disturbances, so that the inhabitants of the rural districts, such as the Fylde, had settled down to the cultivation of the soil, and would care little to assist in a work which as far as they were privately concerned, could only terminate in the devastation of their fields, and, probably, in the ruin of many of their households. ”

“ For some little time after the foregoing transfer, the bathing vans, as if to keep up the fiction of the season, re-appeared with uninterrupted regularity each year upon the beach, but even that last connecting link between the deserted town, as far as visitors were concerned, and its former popularity, was doomed shortly to be broken, for the ancient machines, never renewed, and seldom repaired, were at length unequal to the rough journey over the cobble stones, and crumbled to pieces on the way, expiring miserably in the cause of duty, from old age and unmerited neglect. ”

“ About one mile from the town of Lytham, in the direction of Preston, is a pool of moderate dimensions, having an open communication with the river, and formed into a small harbour or dock for yachts and vessels connected with the coasting trade. In the bed of the river, a little higher up than that locality, trunks of large trees are occasionally observed at low water, and many such remains of a once noble forest, which is believed to have extended from near the Welsh coast as far even as Morecambe, have been raised at different times during the operation of dredging. ”

“ On the 25th of July, the Preston and Wyre Railway, running through the heart of this district, was completed and declared open for traffic. By its means the farmer became enabled to convey his produce to the extensive market of Preston; and Kirkham, Poulton, and Garstang were no longer the only towns accessible to our agriculturists for the sale of their crops. The early appreciation of the utility and benefit of the line is apparent from the rapid increase of its traffic, as shown by the annexed tables, in which the official returns of passengers and goods for the week ending Dec. ”

“ There is little to be remarked, because little is known, respecting the social and moral aspects of the untutored race which, in the earliest historic age, sought a domicile or refuge amidst the forests of the Fylde, or invaded its glades in search of prey. The habits of the Setantii were simply those of other savage tribes who depended for their daily sustenance upon their skill and prowess in the chase, and whose intercommunion with the world beyond their own limited domains, was confined to hostile or friendly meetings with equally barbarous races whose frontiers adjoined their own. ”

“ The daily crowds parading the recently-erected pier were satisfactory evidence of the high estimation in which that elegant addition to the attractions of the place was held, whilst the thronged thoroughfares during the heat of summer bore witness to the growing affection which Blackpool was gaining for itself in the hearts of the million. Active exertions were necessary on the part of the builders to keep pace with the ever-increasing demand for more extended residential provision, houses being scarcely completed before the eager tenants had established themselves in their new domiciles. ”

“ In fact the rooms at the hotels are very extensive. Bank’s is the most commodious. The inhabitants seem to have no taste for ornamenting their doorways or windows with trellis work or verandahs, or with jessamines, woodbines, or hollyhocks, similar to those at Southport, and many of the sea-bathing situations in the south. It is not to be wondered at that there are here frequently at the flux of the season, from eight hundred to a thousand visitors. Blackpool has most certainly been honoured since its commencement as a watering-place by persons of distinction and fashion. ”

“ We can only discover a record of one witch in the Fylde; this person of unenviable notoriety is stated to have had her abode in Singleton, and to have been known to the villagers as Mag Shelton. Her food, according to local tradition, was composed of boiled groats mixed with thyme or parsley, and numerous are the anecdotes related of her evil machinations and doings in the neighbourhood—the cows of the country people were constantly milked by her, whilst the pitcher walked before her in the form of a goose; lives were blighted and prosperity checked by the influence of her evil eye. ”

“ During the reign of Edward III., Henry, earl of Lancaster, was created duke of the county with the consent of the prelates and peers assembled in parliament. This nobleman, whose pious and generous actions earned for him the title of the “Good duke of Lancaster,” received a mandate from the king during the war with France, when there were serious apprehensions of an invasion by that nation, to arm all the lancers on his estates, and to set a strict watch over the seacoasts of Lancashire. ”

“ In 1651 the son of the unfortunate monarch, who had been proclaimed king by the Scotch under the title of Charles II., crossed the frontier and invaded England with a force of fourteen thousand men. That year the earl of Derby, Sir Thomas Tyldesley, and several other officers, sailed from the Isle of Man, whither they had retired, in obedience to the call of the young prince, and landed either on the Warren, at the mouth of the river Wyre, or at Skippool higher up the stream, with a regiment of two hundred and fifty infantry and sixty cavalry. ”

“ The fairy, for such she proved to be, made known her presence to the agriculturist by suddenly crying in a distressed tone—“I have broken my speet,” and then held out in her hands the useless instrument with a hammer and nails. No sooner had she received her property, restored to a state of utility, than she vanished into the earth, but not, however, without leaving a substantial acknowledgment of his skill and kindness in the palm of the astonished husbandman. ”