Page:History of the Fylde of Lancashire (IA historyoffyldeof00portiala).pdf/219

 makers, five linen and woollen drapers, four tailors, three milliners, four grocers, three ironmongers, three joiners, two wheel-*wrights, two coopers, two painters, three plumbers and glaziers, and two corn-millers. Subsequently Harrison's residence was used for parochial purposes, and formed the town's workhouse until the bill of Sir Robert Peel brought about the joint system of pauper relief and management under the name of Unions; and at one time small looms were placed in the old shed behind the workhouse, for the purpose of providing remunerative occupation for some of the inmates. Three fairs are held annually for cattle and cloth, and take place on the 3rd of February, the 13th of April, and the 3rd of November, whilst a general market, but very indifferently, if at all, attended, is appointed to be held each Monday. About the year 1840, when the Preston and Wyre Railway was completed and the Poulton Station erected, a dye-house of some considerable size, and one that had done a large business in the Fylde for many years, was taken down, and shortly afterwards the Royal Oak Hotel built on its site. About the same time the old brook, over which the cuckstool hung in earlier days, and whose waters had long been polluted by discharges from the dye-house, was arched over with brick and earth, and included in the station premises. The Railway Hotel was erected a little anterior to the inn just mentioned. The other hotels of Poulton, situated in the town itself, are ancient, and by their size and number, considering the smallness of the present population, are indicative of the former importance of its market and fairs, and intimate that its position as the centre of a wide district was the means of exciting and maintaining a large amount of commercial activity, such as would necessitate the frequent visits of business agents and others. Several private houses can be pointed out as having been in earlier days places of public entertainment, amongst which may be named one now used as a bakery and bread shop in Queen's Square, and which formerly bore the name of the Spread Eagle Hotel; in Sheaf Street, also, there existed about half a century ago a small but respectable hotel, called the Wheat Sheaf Inn, with bowling green attached, but like other more pretentious establishments, it has been converted into a dwelling-house, whilst a handsome residence occupies the old bowling green.