Page:History of the Fylde of Lancashire (IA historyoffyldeof00portiala).pdf/198



CHAPTER VII.

PARISH OF POULTON-LE-FYLDE.

POULTON.

The ancient town and port of Poulton occupies the summit of a gentle ascent about one mile removed from the waters of Wyre at Skippool, and three from the Irish Sea at Blackpool. Between 1080 and '86, Poltun, as it was written in the Norman Survey, contained no more than two carucates of land under tillage, or in an arable condition, so that out of the 900 acres composing the township, only 200 were cultivated by the inhabitants. A considerable proportion of the entire area of the township, however, would be covered with lofty trees, and provide excellent forage ground for large herds of swine, which formed the chief live-stock dealt in by our Anglo-Saxon and early Norman ancestors. Taking this into consideration, the comparatively small amount of soil devoted to agriculture, may not, indeed, indicate so meagre a population about the close of the eleventh century as otherwise it would seem to do, but still the evidence adduced is barely sufficient whereon to base the assumption that the antecedents of Poulton had been less under the destructive influence of the Danes than those of its neighbours. Regarding the locality more retrospectively, and turning back, for a brief space, to the era of the Romans, it must be admitted that nothing has as yet been discovered which could be construed into an intimation that the followers of Agricola, or their descendants, ever had a settlement or encampment on the site. It is true that the churchyard has yielded up many specimens of their ancient coinage, whilst others have been