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...

Poulton Gig for Car Club

Saturday 8 December saw us out at Poulton Golf Club to play for the Christmas "do" of a local car club.

It was a superb night, the audience were cracking jokes with us and we got a lot of good feedback at the end of the night and afterwards. Miss Jeannie reached down to the bottom of the costume box to find the old Mexican sombreros we used to wear when playing "Dance the Night Away". So they made a reappearance!

Another surprise was bumping into an old friend from school! Janet Astley was one of the bunch of close friends from sixth form days. There was even a song or two she remembered from the old days when I was in a band called "Anacreon" and before that in the rather less nattily named "Heywood Senior High School Folk Group"...

David took this one of Jan and I behind Miss Franny and Miss Jeannie before we started playing. ...er... that is before the band started playing... Just so there's no confusion...!

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!