Page:History of the Fylde of Lancashire (IA historyoffyldeof00portiala).pdf/13



HISTORY OF THE FYLDE.

CHAPTER I.

THE ANCIENT BRITONS, ROMANS, ANGLO-SAXONS, AND DANES.

"See! in what crowds the uncouth forms advance: Each would outstrip the other, each prevent Our careful search, and offer to your gaze, Unask'd, his motley features. Wait awhile, My curious friends! and let us first arrange In proper order your promiscuous throng."

The large district of western Lancashire, denominated from time immemorial the Fylde, embraces one third at least of the Hundred of Amounderness, and a line drawn from Ashton, on the Ribble, to Churchtown, on the Wyre, forms the nearest approach to an eastern boundary attainable, for although the section cut off by its means includes more land and villages than properly appertain to the Fylde, a more westerly division would exclude others which form part of it. The whole of the parishes of Bispham, Lytham, Poulton, and St. Michael's; and the parish of Kirkham, exclusive of Goosnargh-with-Newsham and Whittingham, are comprised in the Fylde country.

The word Amounderness was formerly considered to signify the "Promontory of Agmund," or "Edmund," and this origin is alluded to in a treatise written some years since by Mr. Thomas