Page:History of the Fylde of Lancashire (IA historyoffyldeof00portiala).pdf/420

 innholder of London." The bequest in this instance amounted to £850, and the two executors, Richard Wilson and Robert Pigot, were directed, "with all convenient speed to apply such sum of money towards the building or finishing of a school-house for educating of boys and girls in Ribby-cum-Wrea," and in the purchase of land for the benefit of such establishment, and the remuneration of the master, "for educating such a number of boys and girls as nine of the most substantial men, chosen and elected out of Ribby-cum-Wrea for governors or elders, or the major part of them, shall think fit;" also that his name should be inscribed in some prominent place on one of the school walls.

In 1780 a girls' school was established in a building separate from that of the boys, but in 1847 the trustees of the foundation gave the "materials of the boys' school" and the plot of land as a site for the new church, and in return the ecclesiastical party erected, according to agreement, another school-house on a piece of ground adjoining the girls' school.

POPULATION OF RIBBY-WITH-WREA.

1801. 1811.  1821.  1831.  1841.  1851.  1861.  1871. 307     398    500    482    442    406    444    446

The area of the township amounts to 1,366 statute acres.

Gilbert de Clifton held the manor about 1280, and subsequently his son William de Clifton was in possession about 1292. During the reign of Edward III. John Fleetwood was lord of Little Plumpton, and in 1394 his descendant, John Fleetwood, resided there. John Talbot Clifton, esq., of Lytham Hall, whose ancestor was the Gilbert de Clifton just mentioned, holds the manor of Westby with Plumpton, by right of inheritance.

Bowen, the geographer, who wrote in 1717, alludes to a spa in Plumpton, and states that it was impregnated with sulphur, vitriol, ochre, iron, and a marine salt, united with a bitter purging salt. The site of the spa has been lost in the lapse of time.

Westby Hall, the seat of the Cliftons, has been supplanted by a farm-house. The old chapel connected with it was opened in 1742 to the Romanists of the district, but closed about a century later. The present Catholic chapel was built in 1861. In 1849