Poulton-le-Fylde, Our New Surroundings

We moved house earlier this year, prompting cries of "Never again!" We've not moved far in terms of distance, but have moved out of Blackpool Borough and into Wyre Borough, in Poulton-le-Fylde.

I'm not giving up the bispham2 email address though. After some 25 years, I'm sure people who email me will have got used to that address by now! Anyway, we've had a few sunny days recently and I ventured out with the camera. The walk into the town centre takes us about 20 minutes.

The town centre is wonderful.. It has a row of old reminders of the past. The stocks, a Jacobean pillar, the "fish stones" - left over from ancient market days, a whipping post - not used these days, and a lamp standard commemorating Queen Victoria's Jubilee.

A closer look at the fish stones and whipping post. Poulton is close to the River Wyre and was a major port in the old days before Fleetwood was built. The whipping post has probably seen its fair share of scurvy knaves in more colourful days!

The parish church of St Chad. The churchyard is best seen in spring when crocuses and daffodils abound. It has its origins in a church on the site dating back at least to 1094 when it was first mentioned in records and quite possibly it predated the coming of William the Conqueror. There are traces of the old church in the structure, but most of what we see is no earlier than the 17th century and a major restoration a century later. Other work was undertaken in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.

The main roads of the town centre surround the church in a square, two sides of it being a one-way system. An old road used to bisect the square but half of it is now pedestrianised and the section with the antiquities seen earlier is now reserved for loading and drop-offs.

There are a couple of old pubs and many more recent ones. The Golden Ball is most likely from the 18th century with two other old pubs in the town being The Thatched House which is thatched no longer and dates from the 1790s and the Ship Inn, now The Cube which dates from the 1800s.

The road out of Poulton towards Carleton which has its own interesting ye olde stories, including one involving the Fylde witch, Meg Shelton. But more of her another time. Up along these ways, but well out of shot here, lie the new Burke Towers...

Colne's Stocks on Wheels

In March 1985 I was trundling around East Lancashire looking for a few curiosities I had read about in Arthur Mee's wonderful series of books The King's England.

Each county had its own book - and they were slightly different counties when the books were written in the 1930s. Westmorland and Cumberland, Rutland and perhaps a couple more were still to be found on a map of England. Other modern county or administrative names such as Merseyside or Greater Manchester were absent. Both Manchester and Liverpool, as well as Windermere, were to be found in Lancashire.

Anyway, I wasn't in any of those places, I was in Colne. You hardly ever hear the name on its own. It's normally the final part of a string - "Burnley, Nelson and Colne"! But Colne had something exciting to show me that day in 1985.

In the churchyard, protected by a slate roof on a timber frame, were a set of stocks mounted on a little cart on metal wheels.

There's not a lot to say about them except that I have never ever come across another set of stocks like them. They would have been dragged round to the local markets so that miscreants could be imprisoned in them for people to mock or throw things at. Stocks were therefore a less harsh punishment than the pillory where the head and hands are shackled, making it impossible to protect the face.

I went back to Colne not all that long after these were taken, hoping to take colour photos in better weather, but the stocks had disappeared. What a shame.

A Line of Curiosities

I'm soon going to have to move onto something else. The black and white negatives I took in 1981 are almost inexhaustible! I'm into October now (but have been for a while) and whilst there's some good memories to be had there, I need to start seeing things in colour again for a bit!

Taken 21 October 1981 - but all still there for the taking in colour - in the Lancashire town of Poulton-le-Fylde, near Blackpool, there is an extraordinary line of old and curious things all with stories to tell of bygone ways of life. The stocks were a cheap method of punishment where miscreants and law breakers were pinioned by the legs on market days where they could be pelted with rotten vegetables (or rocks, depending on how vindictive you were feeling). At least in the stocks you could defend your face with your arms. The pillory, which pinioned arms and head was a much harsher punishment, not in itself but in the damage caused by missiles! The market cross behind the stocks is set on a Jacobean pillar mounted upon steps. The stone table affair behind the market cross is the "fish-stones", where bartering for goods took place.

Behind those is a whipping post where people were publicly flogged. We talk of poverty these days forgetting that people throughout history in this country knew that if a harvest failed then they were likely to starve to death. Stealing food was a serious crime in such times. People were as likely to be deported to Australia or hanged as they were to be flogged for stealing a loaf of bread. Deportation meant being chained in a crowded ship's hold for months on end, sitting, sleeping in your own and everyone else's filth and amongst those who had died on the way. Happy times... Luckily for the crims, Human Rights ensures that these days it's only the innocent who have to suffer...

In 1981 the village centre was still open to traffic. This road was later returned to a cobbled surface and pedestrianised. Once we get some sunshine again I will go and retake these in colour!

Northleach Museum of Mechanical Music

Saturday 4 June 1994. It was still raining as we returned towards Bourton-On-The-Water and our hotel from Cheltenham and Gloucester, but before we arrived back at the hotel we had noticed another mention of a museum on the map.

At the village of Northleach we found Keith Harding's World of Mechanical Music. If ever you find yourself with a couple of hours to spare, pay it a visit. The small room was packed with people. The guide (who it turned out was Keith Harding himself) welcomed us and then asked an unexpected question.

"Before we start, would you like to see the collection of clocks?" Somewhat bemused we glanced around at each other. Someone nodded and it became infectious. Yes we would like to see the clocks! "Come through, it may be a little squashed!" he apologised, leading us from the museum room into the hallway of his living quarters. A small collection of clocks stood in the hallway - every size of clock you could imagine, from a mantleshelf clock to one that belonged in a clock tower (albeit fitted with a more modest face!)

He proceeded to talk about the clocks, about how, when and where they were made, the type of people who would have had a clock like that and the way in which they were wound. In the middle of his talk a small terrier came down the stairs and launched into a frenzy of friendly leg licking. We patted it dutifully and then with enthusiasm, for as his tale of the clocks went on we became fascinated until he finished with the church clock, demonstrating how the clock in the Tower of Westminster was wound each day.

And then, spellbound we were led back into the museum where he played a piece of music on each of the instruments in the place - polyphons, beautiful music boxes with automated figures and birds, player pianos, wax cylinder phonographs (Come Into The Garden, Maude) and finally the horn gramophone (Teddy Bears' Picnic).

The horn (he explained) was made of papier mache, and all horned gramophones had a horn no bigger than (now how large was it? No matter!). He smiled at us. "Can anyone think why?" he asked gently. There was silence. His smile became broader. "Come now," he chided, "no one with a practical mind?" The answer hit me and I laughed out loud. "So they could get through the door!" I said and his smile became even broader, nodding his delight that he hadn't had to say it himself.

We left the museum, agreeing with the other visitors how pleasant a place it was and what a good time we had had. The guide had worked his magic so well we were all friends by now, even without knowing names! We decided there and then that we would revisit the museum some day.

We headed on up to Bourton-on-the-Water and booked in at a small guest house. Looking through the trees over the River Windrush with its wonderful little bridges, you see the group of buildings where our hotel was.

Apparently on the Friday night someone tried to ram-raid the chemists shop underneath our hotel room in a car. He forgot about the concrete flower pots (trenches more like!) and only succeeded in wrecking the car and had fled, leaving blood in the car. We slept blissfully through it all! Serves the dipstick right, I hope it hurt!

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