Page:History of the Fylde of Lancashire (IA historyoffyldeof00portiala).pdf/307

 *messuage, 10 acres, held by Edmund Holle, 10s. 0d. In Carleton the abbey owned a close named Whitbent, which William Carleton rented at 1s. 6d., a year; and in Elswick, a barn and 3 acres of land, held by Christopher Hennett, for an annual payment of 3s. 4d. In the Coucher Book of Whalley Abbey, from which the foregoing information has been obtained there occurs the following notice, relating to the Hall, apparently written when the above survey was made:—"The house of Stayning is in length xxvii. yards, and lofted ou'r and slated; ye close called ye little hey contains by estimation halfe an acre, and ye said house payeth yearly, 6s." Sir Thomas Holt, of Grizlehurst, appears to have been the first proprietor of the conventual lands of Staining after they had been confiscated to the crown at the dissolution of monasteries; and from him they were purchased, either towards the end of the reign of Henry VIII., or at the commencement of that of Edward VI., by George the son of Robert Singleton, by his wife Helen, daughter of John Westby, of Mowbreck. The Singletons, of Staining, resided at the Hall until the close of the seventeenth century, and during that long period formed alliances with several of the local families of gentry, as the Carletons of Carleton, the Fleetwoods of Rossall, the Bambers of Carleton, and the Masseys of Layton. On the death of George Singleton, the last of the male representatives of the Singletons of Staining, somewhere about 1790, the estates descended to John Mayfield, the son of his sister Mary, and subsequently, on his decease without issue, to his nephew and heir-at-law, William Blackburne. Staining Hall, now the property of W. H. Hornby, esq., of Blackburn, is a small and comparatively modern residence, presenting in itself nothing calling for special notice or comment from an antiquarian point of view. Remains of the old moat, however, are still in existence round the building, but beyond this there is no indication of the important station the Hall must have formerly held in the surrounding country, both as the abode of some of its priestly proprietors, of Stanlawe and Whalley, and the seat of a family of wealth and position, like the Singletons would seem to have been.

The township of Hardhorn-with-Newton contains the free school erected and endowed by Mr. James Baines, which has already been fully noticed in the chapter devoted to Poulton.