Page:History of the Fylde of Lancashire (IA historyoffyldeof00portiala).pdf/15

 "Field." Camden in his "Britannia" of 1590, writes:—

"Tota est campestris, unde Fild pro Field appellatur." (The whole is champaign, whence it is called Fild for Field.)

In a subsequent edition of the same work Fild is spelt File, and the latter orthography was used inFileplumpton, in the Duchy records, afterwards called Fylde Plumpton, and now Wood Plumpton. The Fylde section of this Hundred is a level well-watered country, highly cultivated and richly productive, especially of grain, from which circumstance it was formerly designated the corn-field of Amounderness.

Anterior to the third invasion of the Romans in A.D. 43, the inhabitants of the Fylde and other portions of Lancashire lying between the range of mountains which separates this county from Yorkshire, and the coast about the Bay of Morecambe, were called the Setantii or Segantii, "the dwellers in the country of water," but at that date the whole tract populated by these people was included in the more extensive province of the Brigantes, comprehending what are now known as the six counties of York, Durham, Northumberland, Westmoreland, Cumberland, and Lancaster. The Fylde at that epoch would be composed chiefly of morasses and forests, interspersed with limited areas and narrow paths of more stable land, and there can be little doubt that the dwellers on such an uninviting spot must have been very few, but that it was traversed and, as far as practicable, inhabited by the ancient Setantii is evident from the several relics of them which have been discovered amongst the peat in modern days. Two or three canoes, consisting of light wooden frameworks, covered with hides, were found by a man named Jolly, about half a century ago, when cutting the "Main Dyke" of Marton Mere; Celtic hammers, axes, and spears have also been taken out of the mosses in the district, all of which were doubtless originally the property of the aboriginal Britons. The bay of Morecambe and the river Wyre acquired their distinctive appellations from the Setantii, the one being