Page:History of the Fylde of Lancashire (IA historyoffyldeof00portiala).pdf/376

 respectively. Birds, swords, diminutive shields, etc., complete the decorations.

From the year 418, when the Romans vacated the island, up to the compilation of the Domesday Book by William the Conqueror in 1080-86, a period of over six and a half centuries, history preserves no record of any matter or event directly connected with the town, as distinct from the Hundred in which it is situated. Nevertheless it is obvious that Kirkham must have sprung into being some time during that protracted era, insomuch as it appears amongst the places existing in Amounderness in the Norman survey just indicated. The name is a compound derived from the Anglo-Saxons and Danes, and although the syllable "Kirk," coming from the latter, and signifying a church, could not have been in use until those pirates first invaded the land in 787, and probably was not applied until the mistaken policy of Alfred the Great allowed them to colonise this and other parts of Northumbria, one hundred years later, still it would scarcely be justifiable to conclude that there was no dwelling or village here, as the Anglo-Saxon "ham" implies, anterior to that date. The location of the place on the margin of an open thoroughfare, and the former establishment of the Romans within or near to its boundaries, incline us rather to the opinion that from the earliest arrival of the Anglo-Saxons they had selected this site for the foundation of a small settlement, and that the "ham" or hamlet so created bore a purely Saxon title until the advent of the Danes, under whose influence the orthography became altered by the substitution from their vocabulary of the word "kirk" for the one originally bestowed upon it.

Some idea of the condition of Kirkham at the Norman Conquest may be gleaned from the report concerning the Fylde in the Domesday Book, in which it is stated that of the 840 statute acres comprised in the township, only 400 (four carucates) were under cultivation, the rest being waste, that is, untilled, but very possibly in service as forage ground for swine. At that period the town undoubtedly possessed a church, one of the three mentioned in the record above-named, as standing in Amounderness, but the era of its erection is conjectural merely. The name of Kirkham, however,—the church hamlet,—is manifestly of ecclesiastical origin, and the Danish derivation of "kirk"