Here Today, Bourne Tomorrow (Title copyright © Steventon’s Corny Puns Ltd)

Meet Francis Twizell. As well as having an excellent name (it’s pronounced Twye-Zell incidentally – sounds very Dickensian, doesn’t it?) and hair attaining the sort of length that mine could never reach (far too curly mine…after about six inches it just becomes one huge wave on either side of my head and I end up looking like a giant bluebell) Francis also has the dubious distinction of being Wyre Archaeology’s latest recruit. (At least he does at the time of writing. He might have left and gone into hiding when this article finally makes it to being posted.)
Here’s Francis anyhow, getting to grips with Danielle’s geophysics machine on February the fifteenth 2009 (for anybody reading this who likes their literature to be chronologically ordered):

(I realise I’ve used the old bedstead joke before, but it’s been that sort of day. If you want invention try asking the government about Britain’s economic prospects.)
At the time of writing, we’re waiting for Danielle’s geophysics’ results, but, effectively, the survey’s completed and, short of the many arguments that are about to ensue concerning the placement of this summer’s trenches with regard to said results, the job’s a good ’un.
(Editor's note: At the time of posting, the geophys results are in. However, I'm going to be completely evil now and make everybody wait until I write a separate article for them. While I'm here, though, I'd better just correct the fact that I've been going round telling everyone that the A.G.M. is this month. It isn't, apparently. It's next month. And so senility sends out its twisted roots. Enough, back to the article...)
Not having been put off by his experiences thus far (apparently people come to us for the crack and stay for the banter…the bloke who sells the crack having usually buggered off by the time they get there) Francis actually returned to Bourne Hill the following weekend to help us complete our contour survey as well. (Brave lad…he must be very serious about taking archaeology up as a profession.)

Yes, you did read that correctly. Danielle is, even as I type, either in training for, or climbing up, Kilimanjaro. I’m not sure which. I can’t be bothered with all that research.
Anyhow, as possibly already intimated (I can’t be bothered reading back through this article to check, either) we managed to finish the contour survey on February the 20th 2009. Well, when I say finished…we completed the bit for the rectangular enclosure on the summit. We’ve still got plenty left to survey around the rest of the site yet.
Want to see the results? It’s a rhetorical question. Unless you’re blind or have extremely quick responses you’re going to see them anyway, because here they are:

What exactly does this tell us about the nature of the settlement beneath the ground?
Not a lot, to be honest. But we have to combine it with our geophysics results really, which we haven’t (at the time of writing) actually got. Give us chance. We’re doing the best we can.
Because it’s not a particularly long article this week, I thought we could finish with a couple more photographs from the last two helpings of our surveys. The first one features Paul Bradshaw (Lord of Bodkin Hall) and Ken Emery (Wyre Archaeology Secretary) helping out with the geophysics:

Last, and almost certainly least (as far as humorous captions go at any rate) here’s one of Chris Clayton (Head of our Surveying Department) half hidden, as always, behind his dumpy:

The Ancient Road over Stanah Hill

We often receive emails here at the Fylde and Wyre Antiquarian. Believe it or not, they’re not all abusive and/or trying to sell us something. Herbal Viagra’s a popular bit of spam. Septic tanks, for some reason, is another. Exactly what this says about how the advertisers view us, I wouldn’t like to speculate. Occasionally, however, we receive an email from a decent, intelligent person, making enquiries and/or observations on earthworks and other stuff that they might have noticed around the district.

The most frequently asked about of these is the road over Stanah Hill. (I don’t know why this is the case. But it is.)
Now, with other enquiries such as those concerning Singleton Thorpe or Kilgrimol or what have you, I usually just point the said inquirer in the direction of some previous article we’ve written. It saves a lot of wear and tear on the wrists because I don’t have to respond with a lengthy email. When it comes to Stanah Hill, however, try as I might, I can’t find a previous article about the subject anywhere on this board. There probably is one, stuck away amongst the mulch of by-gone postings, mouldering quietly in the electronic bowels of the Internet, but if there is, I’ve lost track of it.

So, with that in mind, here are a few facts and stuff about the road crossing Stanah Hill…mainly for the benefit of future inquirers.
This is the top of Stanah Hill, looking east towards the River Wyre:

If you look closely you should be able to make out the aforementioned grass-covered road running parallel to the fence and disappearing into the mediaeval hedge.
Back in Victorian Times this road (now a public footpath) led from Underbank Road, over the hilltop and down to Cockle Hall ferry, which, if you were that way inclined, would then transport you across the river to Wardleys.
But the road itself is, as you’ve probably gathered, considerably more ancient than that.
Here’s the other end of it at Nateby, being dug by the Pilling Historic Society back in 1995.

Study the photograph carefully and you’ll see that it’s the same size, same agger and ditch system, same everything really.
Our old (now sadly departed) friend Neil Thompson traced the road, way back when, using a probe, following it all the way from behind the school in Nateby, via Hambleton, down to the pub at Wardleys, where originally it crossed the river to Stanah by a ford (long before the ferry set up its little trade) and continued over the top of Stanah Hill.
At the Nateby end, in 2003, two denarii, a silver ‘Tiberius’ and a bronze ‘Claudius’, were discovered lying on the split-pebbled surface, confirming that the track was around during the Roman occupation.
Heading northwest from Stanah Hill we can follow our ancient road in the direction of Bourne Hill (and our equally ancient Iron Age Romano/British settlement there).
Before we do that, however, let’s have a map.

Yes, I know that we’ve missed out the bit where the road meets the riverbank. That’s because we’ve borrowed the map from our ‘History of the Wyre (from Harold the Elk to Cardinal Allen)’ and adapted it slightly for use in this article. In fact, if you’d bought a copy of the aforementioned book already, you’d have read about this road before and wouldn’t be enquiring about it now…so there you go.
Anyhow, the agger is clearly visible curving northwest alongside what was the old Saxon village green at Stanah, before it disappears under Stanah Road and the modern housing estate on the other side, where this rather suspicious looking old gatepost marks its route.

We’re not actually saying that this stone is ancient. It might well be. It might well not be. It’s just a bit odd, that’s all.
From this point onwards our ancient road becomes a bit trickier to follow, disappearing as it does beneath the sprawl of modern day Thornton. However, we’re not ones to give up easily, and using an eclectic blend of supposition, old boundary/road markers, decrepit maps and a great deal of guesswork, we’ve managed to produce the following map:

There goes our ancient highway, look, possibly detouring towards Castle Hill at some point, veering sharply between Trunnah and Holmes through Townend Farm, and up past…what? Townend Farm -- on West Drive! What do you mean, why do we reckon it ran that way? Here’s what Ken Emery, Wyre Archaeology secretary and historian extraordinaire, told us. Back in the 1990s Ken interviewed Mrs Marjorie Lang: ‘…a charming nonagenarian whose family used to live at Townend Farm. She recalled, as a young woman, a slight depression roughly ten feet wide running northwards in a straight line from the farm towards the western flank of Bourne Hall hill.”
And back in 1935 (sticking with Townend Farm for the moment, of course) a cobbled track was actually unearthed by the farmer, presumably in the same place as the depression.
Right…can we continue?
Next up then we have the Stanifurlong fields (at least, that’s what they’re called on the old tithe maps), Stanifurlong being in the ancient tongue a furlong full of stones (stanis…see?), which, all matters considered, suggests that our cobbled track continued along this route.
Finally, we reach Bourne Hill, where in 2005 we found this:

All right, it might not look like much, but that’s a fire-split cobbled track, that is, looping around (and presumably into at some point) our Romano/British Iron Age settlement.
Returning to Stanah Hill, taking into consideration the exceptional view from the summit and the fact that the road runs right across it, you’d expect to find an Iron Age settlement, Romano custom’s house or, at the very least, some sort of ancient watchtower perched on it somewhere.
To date, however, nobody’s found anything.
Then again, nobody’s ever dug it.
Who knows what might yet come to light? Not me, that’s for certain, and because this article’s gone for far too long, I’m going to bring it to an end.

Suffering from Heart Bourne

(Editor’s note: If there’s anybody reading this who reckons they can come up with more amusing titles for these ‘Bourne Postings’ -- and let’s face it, you couldn’t honestly do much worse -- then please leave your suggestions in the comments box below. There’s going to be a lot of these ‘Bourne’ articles over the next twelve months, most likely, and I’m not sure I can stand any more of these low-grade puns.)
Right, it was the run up to Christmas 2008 – or the let down to Christmas 2008 depending on your point of view – which effectively meant that the vast majority of Wyre Archaeology members were being ordered around the shops by their other halves whilst being battered with rolling pins, Christmas puddings, frozen turkeys etc into ‘enjoying the festive season’. Other halves, I’ve noticed, tend to have an old fashioned view of Christmas, which runs something along the lines of: “It’s family time y’ miserable sod, so you’ll stand there looking fed up and blocking the aisle whether you’d rather be with y’r silly little archaeology friends or not!”)
Fortunately not everybody’s partners were quite so festively inclined, so there was David, Ken, me and Chris, all on the top of Bourne Hill in the fog, continuing our contour survey regardless of the seasonal obligations suffered by most.


Obviously the fog had burnt off quite a bit by the time that the photograph above was taken, but when we started out it was all a bit spooky and mysterious.


Actually, on the whole, it wasn’t a bad morning, especially seeing as I’d got a new flask for my soup. This one worked, unlike the flimsy bit of rubbish I’d bought from Woolworth’s a couple of weeks before. One of the advantages of not giving a stuff about Christmas and all that rot, is that you can actually buy yourself something practical instead of wasting several months’ wages on some bit of pointless tat for your spouse who, in return, will waste her money on a bit of pointless tat for you.


However, I’m wandering from the point of the article. (Editor: You mean it’s got one?) Unfortunately, it does take at least three people to conduct a thorough contour survey, so after Ken left to take his dog for a walk, and David left to help out with the reindeers and elves at the farm (apparently the place was infested with them, so he took his shovel and a large bag of salt with him, to put a stop to their antics once and for all), there wasn’t much point in me and Chris hanging around either.
In case you’ve forgotten what we were actually doing, we were conducting a contour survey of the top of Bourne Hill where the Iron Age settlement is…was…still is under the soil…at least in part.
There really wasn’t much more to the morning than that, so this is going to be a very short posting. (Oy! I heard that cheer from here!)
Just time to post the results of the survey so far and bugger off for some mince pie and chips then:

The Crumbling Coastline

There’s so much footage showing the cliffs around Yorkshire (not to mention Scotland and other such places) collapsing into the sea because of erosion, that you’d be forgiven for thinking Shakespeare’s ‘island fortress’ is rapidly becoming a ‘ruined keep’. The Fylde and Wyre are no exception. Our coast is forever being worn into oblivion by pounding waves, as the saga of Uncle Tom’s Cabin illustrates.
No, not the novel about American slaves! I’m talking about the Georgian building in Blackpool, so called because its original owner was the enterprising Tom the Cobbler, whose foresight to open his wooden ‘lean-to’ as accommodation for paying visitors was probably more responsible for the sprawling great mess that Blackpool became than any other factor.


There’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, look, although visitors to the town nowadays might be hard pushed to recognise it. That’s because the entire building infamously fell off the cliffs in the 19th century, although (fortunately perhaps) nobody was in at the time. In the 1860s a large field stood between the building and the cliff’s edge but within thirty years, due to constant erosion, only the dangerously narrow path shown in the etching (which, incidentally, we’ve coloured in for our reader in an attempt to cheer up this board) remained. At one hundred feet above sea level the final collapse must have been depressingly spectacular.
Here’s what Uncle Tom’s Cabin look likes today.


Well, it’s something like that anyhow. I might have got the colour scheme wrong. I’ve lost the original photograph and can’t be bothered catching the tram back to North Shore to double-check. I’ve got a suspicion there might be more creams and pinks in it than that, but who cares?
Obviously during the rebuild of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (the only building in the country, by the way, that, as far as I know, has a tram stop named after it) the owners took the precaution of laying the foundations some considerable distance from the cliff’s edge, behind the tramlines in fact, the idea being, no doubt, that when trams starting disappearing into oblivion accompanied by descending screams and mangled, meaty crunches, it was probably time to sell up and move on.
One of the main reasons for the disintegration of Blackpool’s coastline was quite simply greed. The railway companies needed gravel for their tracks, so the enterprising bods around town set about digging up the ‘scars’ (or banks of shingle) off the coast that had been protecting the shore from rogue waves for millennia. The net result was no more protection for the cliffs!
It’s hard to say how much prehistoric stuff has been lost in the gradual collapse of the cliffs. Ancient tribes favoured the coast for their natural habitats as it provided them with abundant seafood as well as being a great place to spend their holidays.
Every so often, however, a small glimpse of what’s been destroyed comes to light amongst the detritus. Here’s what Allen Clarke had to say in his ‘Story of Blackpool’: “The late Mr. Chew, of Granville Road, an ardent geologist, who used to go poking about the shore with a hammer and magnifying-glass, once showed me a curious old urn and a stone head and face, rudely carved, with marks on the forehead like hieroglyphics.”
Needless to say the whereabouts of both artefacts are now unknown. The stone head, however, wasn’t unique. John Hallam’s ‘The Surviving Past: Archaeological finds and excavations in Central Lancashire’, for example, records that: “Other objects characteristic of this period and found in other parts of the north-west…include stone beehive type rotary querns and carved stone heads. Some of the latter representing Celtic Gods, may well belong to the Iron Age, such as the one in the Harris Museum found near the River Ribble.”
Here’s an illustration of that particular stone head, which, all matters considered, was probably very similar to Mr. Chew’s artefact.


The ‘hieroglyphs’ across the forehead were most likely Ogham, an early form of Celtic writing predating the runes of the Norse.
Allen Clarke goes on to inform us that both objects were: “…found in the clay cliffs (near Uncle Tom’s)”, all of which suggests that there was possibly an ancient burial ground and settlement close by.
This wasn’t the only prehistoric settlement to be usurped by the waves along the Fylde coast. According to Peter Bennett’s ‘A Very Desolate Position’: “In a lecture given at (Rossall) school in 1905 (William Boyd Dawkins) described the submarine forest which stretched in prehistoric times from the Isle of Man to the Isle of Wight. He pointed out the section which could still be seen at low tide off the Rossall coastline, where Neolithic flints and bones have been discovered, and where Bronze Age occupation was attested by pottery and weapons, similar to those discovered at Bleasdale.”
Then there were the later Saxon villages that couldn’t withstand the constant pounding of the sea. Singleton Thorpe off Cleveleys and Waddum Thorpe at the other end of the coast both dramatically succumbed to the unstoppable tide. Or, at least, that’s how the legends run. Rather than gradual erosion, there’s a distinct probability that both were drowned by tsunamis.
Over the centuries, lesser, but almost as destructive, storms have been responsible for the disappearance of the White Houses (a row of cottages) in Fleetwood (they used to stand on the corner of the Marine Hall gardens just opposite the Mount Hotel), the original, mediaeval version of Rossall Hall, Fenny Farm, and, as William Thornber informs us: “At Foxhall and onwards, the devastation has been enormous; tradition speaks of whole fields, including the ‘Horse Bank’, having been swept into the sea.”
You want a picture of the Fox Hall, don’t you? Go on then. It’s an old ’un, but it’s a good ’un.


And on that sudden and inexplicably abrupt note, I’m going to stop.

Bourne’s Unit

(Can you see what I’ve done with the title of this article? Bourne’s Unit? Sounds a bit like ‘Burns Unit’, as in the hospital ward, only it isn’t. It’s actually about us, i.e. me, Chris and Carlo, making up a ‘unit’ from Wyre Archaeology responsible for conducting a detailed contour survey on the top of Bourne Hill. See? Is that clever or what? All right…sod off if you want to be like that!)
It was Sunday the thirtieth of November 2008, and it was blooming cold! So cold that initially I thought Chris had got a new ornament for the end of his car aerial until I realised that a passing robin had taken a dump, which had frozen it by means of a long, thin streak of guano to the car bonnet. Every so often the robin made a rasping noise when the wind blew it about a bit.
Bourne Hill was almost picturesque, being all white and sparkly when we first arrived, although by the time the photograph below was taken the frost had melted considerably.


I’ve added a few helpful labels to the image so that anybody interested in contour surveying can see something of the methodology employed. We have actually covered this subject in more detail elsewhere, so for now let’s talk about my soup instead.
I was looking forward to that soup. Golden Vegetable, it was! Just the ticket for a day such as this when Jack Frost wasn’t so much nipping at my toes as attacking them violently with a pair of garden shears; the sort of day in which, when I exhaled, my breath didn’t hang in front of my face but formed a large block of ice which then left a divot in the ground when it fell. Hot, steaming, soup was just what was needed to warm up the pipes and clear the sinuses. I’d even bought one of those crusty loaves and smothered two slices of it (about the same size and thickness as two anthologies of Classical Greek Literature) with enough fresh butter to scare the bejesus out of my cholesterol.
The trouble was the flask didn’t work. Woolies had sold us a duff one, and by dinnertime when my stomach was rumbling away like the organ in Canterbury Cathedral, I unscrewed the lid to discover a solid block of vegetables welded together with permafrost.
But enough about that.
Let’s have another photograph.


It’s not a very good photograph, I’m afraid – especially since somebody’s written all over it. However, it once again shows Carlo holding his ranging pole, this time so that Chris can align the dumpy level for one of the ‘rib’ measurements (and if you didn’t understand that then I suggest that you hunt down the ‘How to be an Archaeologist: Contour Surveying Techniques’ article through the links on the right-hand column before you start complaining to me about it).
Three and a half quid that flask cost me! And seventy-eight pence for the tin of soup! In these times of recession that’s not on! Unfortunately I’d lost the receipt so I couldn’t take it back, but what a rip-off, eh? No wonder Woolies went bankrupt!
Those ranging poles were supplied to us by Paul Bradshaw, by the way. Remember him? He owns Bodkin Hall, one of our archaeological sites from the summer? It was very decent of him to let us have them. Actually, he turned up on Bourne Hill this particular morning to see how we were getting along. Unfortunately I didn’t take a photograph of him, so the following image of the ranging poles huddling together for warmth will have to suffice.


Also putting in an appearance that day were Ken (for an hour or so) and John (for about thirty seconds before he realised how cold it was up there and disappeared somewhere warmer…and I can’t honestly blame him).
Incidentally, for the ornithologically minded, those fields behind Carlo are protected. They can never be built on (apparently) because they’re the habitat of the extremely rare pink-footed goose. Obviously there weren’t any at home when the photograph was taken, but it’s still a fact.
But that’s not important. What is important is what a pointless waste of perfectly good soup that was! There ought to be a law against that sort of thing. Quality control? Hah!
Right…we didn’t get very far with the survey. We seldom do. Contour Surveys take lots of time and concentration and effort and soup and stuff, which is why most members of Wyre Archaeology can’t be bothered turning up for them. However, because I’m in a generous mood here are the results as they stand at the time of writing (which, no doubt, will be considerably advanced by the time this article gets posted):


What? Come on, what do you want? Blood? I said we hadn’t got very far, didn’t I? Give us a chance. The full contour map will be ready for when we get back to excavating this site in spring. You can trust me on that! Which is more than can be said for Woolworth’s if they ever try and sell you a blasted soup flask!

Geophysics at Bourne Hill

This is me, on the ninth of November 2008 (that’s last year now in case you’re still suffering from a hangover), at home, behind my computer, with man flu, which is much worse than woman flu but only, apparently, if you’re not actually a woman, trying my utmost to look sophisticated and clever and stuff and not at all snotty and half asleep.


Outside it was bucketing down and blowing a force ten gale, much as the Met Office had been pessimistically forecasting all week.
Now, I’m not trying to make excuses, but the simple truth is I’m one of those people who gets sent a letter from his doctor at this time of year telling me to go for a flu jab otherwise I’ll probably drop dead at some point during the winter. Those sort of letters are usually reserved for people over the age of sixty-five, I know, due to the shortage of flu vaccines, but that’s just a measure of how dilapidated forty-odd years of alcohol, steak and kidney pies and cigarette abuse can make one already not-quite-up-to-par body. Naturally, being a stubborn sod, I never bother going for those aforementioned jabs, so running the risk of turning the cold I had already into quadruple pneumonia or the plague or something worse, by standing on the top of Bourne Hill in the pouring rain and freezing wind, just wasn’t worth contemplating.
That’s why I sent Chris instead and spent the day myself behind my monitor, intermittently awaiting reports of the survey and playing Final Fantasy III.
Meanwhile, over at Bourne:


You’d have to be a complete and utter moron to be up on Bourne Hill in these conditions.
Er…unless you’re a member of the Wyre Archaeology Survey Crew, of course, in which case it shows a high level of dedication to a worthy cause.
Or if you’ve already got the geophysics equipment booked and it’s too late to cancel it, then that’s probably another good excuse.
Whatever the case, despite the rain lashing down and the wind screaming like some ghastly misplayed chord through the rigging of the geophysics machine, quite a few of our members struggled out of bed and braved the elements.


How many abandoned partners that day were left at home with the words: “I might be gone some time” I couldn’t honestly say, but you never saw those idiots on Extreme Archaeology tackling anything like this.
Four areas in all were geophysied geophysicked geophizzed recorded; four areas, each measuring twenty by twenty metres; each plotted out using the dumpy and a sophisticated system of predefined angles and distances; each holding little hope for clear results, but with its own patch of stinging nettles and a selection of cow pats.
Meanwhile, back at home, feeling all the worse for the sixteenth hot toddy in a row:


So, what was the outcome of all this hard work? Well, I’m not going to tell you, because, at the time of writing, we’re halfway through a much larger geophysical survey (same location, just more of it) to clarify the first lot of results, which, hopefully, should be completed before too much longer. So you’ll just have to wait until then, I’m afraid.

So Cold it’ll Bourne

It wasn’t snowing on November the second, 2008, but there were a few squirrels running round Thornton carrying what at first glance appeared to be hazelnuts but which, having recognised that look of mortification in their eyes, probably weren’t.
There’s an icy blast that blows up Bourne Hill on wintry days such as this. It comes straight in off Morecambe Bay, freezes the shaggy coats of the Aberdeen Anguses on the slopes so that they look as though they’ve turned punk, and then heads directly for any un-tethered trouser legs. Thermal long johns, fingerless gloves and a flask of piping hot leek soup are all sensible precautions.


Not that we had a lot of choice. The geophysics equipment had been booked for November the ninth -- we’re never ones to turn down the free loan of equipment from UCLAN (that’s the University of Central Lancashire before anyone asks…and we’re currently angling for a minibus) -- which gave us just one week to square up, graph out, plot, discuss, examine, argue about and, ultimately, decide on where the machinery could be best put to use. Hypothermia-inducing sub artic conditions or not, some jobs just have to be done.


Our first battle, therefore, was to draw up an accurate plan of the ‘enclosure’ on the summit of the hill, so that our future geophysics results could be laid squarely over the top of it; a simple enough operation you’d think, being the enclosure a basic rectangular shape with straightforward right-angled corners.
You’d think…wouldn’t you?
The trouble is Bourne Hill is quite big. We’ve estimated in the past that the summit alone covers about 80,000 square metres. Add to that the rest of the site, the lower defensive earthworks, the impregnable swamp that constitutes most of the south base, the outer rim of hawthorn bushes and dykes and stuff, and it all starts to get a bit intimidating.
We set up the dumpy over the scratching post (so called because the Aberdeen Anguses use it to scratch their flea-ridden backsides against) figuring that this was about as permanent a feature on Bourne Hill as we were likely to find.
Then we took angles and measurements for the first two corners i.e. the northeast and southeast corners of our upper embankment.
So far so good!
However, when it came to the southwest and northwest corners we hit a couple of problems.
For a start, our walkie-talkies had been dropped in a puddle, or piddled on by a cow or something, several weeks before and we hadn’t replaced them. This made communication a bit on the tricky side.
Then there was the fact that the southwest and northwest corners themselves were actually located down the west slope, out of sight of the aforementioned dumpy and, by way of consequence, its operators, which meant that Ken had to extend the stadia staff to its full, windblown height and then stand there as upright as was humanly possibly in the arctic gales, not knowing what was happening half a mile away with the dumpy.
We stuck Carlo in the middle so that he could pass on messages such as, “Straighten up the top of the pole a bit”, “Extend the staff a tad more” and “Jump about on one leg while humming the theme tune from Pinky and Perky”, but, not being used to the rather vague and complicated hand signals we’d individually adopted, it all became remarkably similar to a game of Chinese Whispers…only without the whispering, of course.


Because this wasn’t enough to completely dampen our spirits, the icy blasts of wind from Cumbria were making our dumpy shiver, thus rendering it impossible to gauge an accurate reading. The technique, you see, is to read the heights on the staff as marked at the upper and lower stadia lines inscribed on the dumpy lens, then multiply the difference by 100 to get the overall distance; simple enough in theory but completely impossible when the stadia staff is little more than a thin white line when viewed through the sights, and then blurred beyond comprehension due to wind-shake.
Chris tried his best with watering eyes and steamed up glasses for the southwest corner. This came to 156 metres distance at an angle of 240 degrees anticlockwise from our northern baseline. (As you’ve probably gathered, I’m reading those figures from our badly scrawled notes.)
In order to double check that, Ed and Dave then took our extra long tape measure and, performing a sort of dance routine similar to that of two rutting fantails, pirouetted their way across to the southwest corner in measured intervals of thirty metres.
Shortly they reported back that the corner was 162 metres from the dumpy.
If you’ve been paying careful attention you might have noticed this wasn’t the same as our original calculation.
Undeterred we moved on to the northwest corner where, respectively, we discovered our embankment to be 165 metres, 158 metres and 167 metres in length. (Or as David Thompson put it: “Five black ‘E’s, one whole wodge of red ‘E’s, another two black ‘E’s and several dots”.)
At this point, Danielle’s nose fell off because of the cold, and we moved on to squaring up our chosen areas for the following week’s geophysics.
We’ll cover those on our next visit to Bourne, I reckon. In the meantime, here’s the finished diagram of our rectangular enclosure…give or take the odd twenty metres or so. Next time we’ll re-measure the sides using a different approach.

A Bird’s Eye View

Most of these photographs (originally obtained courtesy of Frank Smith’s excellent piloting skills) have already been posted over at the Fylde and Wyre Antiquarian forum, which is where I’ve nicked them from. However, I’m working on the assumption that the majority of the people/person reading this board (over thirty million hits a week…pity that counter’s not working properly at the bottom of this page) don’t wander over that way to browse, peruse and otherwise plunder the ever growing archives. All of which is my excuse for rehashing them here.
Let’s start with that sandy old chestnut Bourne Hill in Thornton then, which, on this superb photograph taken by Ivan Carey, looks more like a molehill than a mountain.

Now, if you’re not as familiar with Bourne Hill as we are (and, let’s be honest, very few people alive actually are, because very few people alive are as completely sad and totally obsessed about the place as us) then you’re probably wondering what all the fuss is about. Well, that’s the plain old vanilla flavoured photograph above. Below is the ‘adapted for explanatory reasons’ photograph that we’ve spent no expense creating for you:

There…that should have made everything about as clear as one of Amy Winehouse’s urinary samples, but let’s progress.
Up next, another photograph taken by Ivan, this time of the High Gate Lane Roman agger and ditch in Stalmine. I couldn’t be bothered sorting out two photographs for this offering (i.e. one pristine, the other defaced) so you’ll just have to make do with the scribbled-on version for now:

Right, photograph three, taken (as far as I’m aware) by Frank himself, showing the excavated second roundhouse at Garstang Road in Poulton. (What do you mean, you didn’t realise there was another one? Some of you just haven’t been paying attention to what we’ve said here have you?) By this point, to be honest, both roundhouses will be completely covered by that big spread of tarmac, which just goes to show, you can take the archaeology out of the ground, but the Water Board just takes the Mickey.

And finally for the time being at least (we will be posting more of these photographs at some point I’m sure) here’s a splendid aerial view of Fleetwood taken once again (we think) by Frank. There are a lot of points of interest here, (with the exception of mine and Michelle’s house that’s somewhere off the right hand side of the photograph behind the Mount), so go ahead and knock yourselves out.

If you’ve got any aerial photographs of the district yourselves for us to plunder (should we ever decide to run a follow up article) then you can either post them over at the forum (as previously mentioned somewhere) or send them to me by e-mail. Alternatively, if you fancy a flight in Frank’s plane to capture a few earthworks on film/digital photography card…or whatever those things are called…then have a word with Frank over at the forum and no doubt he’ll be willing to accommodate you. Eleven quid a trip! That’s a serious bargain if ever there was one.

The Fylde’s Original Promenade: Part Two

At the end of last week’s posting we claimed, somewhat annoyingly perhaps considering that we ended the article abruptly immediately afterwards, that we had evidences for a Roman military coastal route leaving Dowbridge Fort in Kirkham by its western exit, heading off via Wrea Green to St. Anne’s before turning north and circumnavigating the coast towards Fleetwood.
So let’s have the evidence then, shall we? In 1893 the Manchester Guardian reported the discovery by workmen laying a new drain near St. Anne’s Road West, of the remains of a Roman road lying some twelve and a half feet below the present road. It measured thirteen feet across and consisted of split stones laid in cement, eighteen inches thick. It was running east/west towards the seafront.

The photograph of St. Anne’s Road West above is actually an Edwardian postcard, courtesy of Phil Barker from Rossallbeach.co.uk (see the link in the right hand panel).
Okay…before we go any further we’d now better journey north to the Fleetwood peninsula where we can pick up physical evidences for the other end of the road.
Famously, in 1840 near Rossall Point a roman coin horde was discovered in the sand close to a ‘large, paved platform’. The coins are now kept in the Harris museum (although not on display, we should add…you have to ask the curators very nicely in order to see them). William Thornber believed the platform to be of Roman construction although, unfortunately, it was: “…destroyed, for the sake of its materials.” He went on to add that: “At this spot I have heard old people speak of the ruins of a rude, thick-walled circular building, round which it was uncanny to sport.”
The building was, in all probability, a Roman watchtower and, as might be expected, a conjectured highway ran close by. This road originally followed the line of Poulton Road to the mouth of Fleetwood harbour, crossed the Wyre by Min End ford (which, incidentally, was described by Captain Denham before its destruction as being of Roman origin and constructed from red sandstone blocks…remarkably similar, in fact, to the floor at Dowbridge fort) and headed to the base of Preesall Hill. (Preesall Hill, incidentally, has also produced at least three fourth century coin hordes and, according to William Thornber and John Just, originally showed signs of housing another Roman fort.)
Because all of that might sound a bit confusing for those not terribly familiar with the area, we’ve included the map below.

En route the road passed by the site of another coin horde and a suspected Roman building now lying beneath Knott End golf course. (For a more detailed assessment of all this, we recommend that you buy a copy of ‘The History of the Wyre from Harold the Elk to Cardinal Allen’; excellent value at only £9.95 from most leading bookstores. Alternatively you can purchase a copy on line by following the link in the right hand side bar.)
So, two potential Roman roads, both heading without apparent purpose into the Irish Sea, one at either end of the Fylde Coast. It doesn’t take a great leap of the imagination to join them together. Two thousand years ago the area we’d recognise nowadays as the beach would have been solid land. It was long ago destroyed through erosion.
But again we’re short on space…so perhaps we’d better leave the next section of this article, in which we provide evidences for the road that originally ran along Blackpool cliffs, until next week.

The Fylde’s Original Promenade: Part One

Anybody who’s ever been connected in even the smallest manner to the Fylde’s prehistoric legacy, has, at some point or other, discussed, debated and argued either for or against the existence of the Roman road known as the Danes’ Pad. Was it just a storm beach? Was it an invention of the Victorians’ over-active imaginations? Or did it really run from Dowbridge fort just north of the Ribble, to the Fleetwood peninsula and/or out into Morecambe Bay to a legendary port that we now know (even if the authorities don’t) once stood at Bourne?
Well, to be honest, we just couldn’t say, but it’s one of those issues that sets father against son and archaeologist against historian, that causes rifts between friends, is responsible for blood curdling screams heard distantly in learned antechambers and, on the more severe occasions, has even been responsible for bloodied noses.
Which is a pity, because, whilst this debate continues to charge around like some recently beheaded chicken, everybody appears to have overlooked the more obvious Roman military road circumnavigating the Fylde coast.
So, it’s time to either examine another, slightly more obvious perhaps, possibility; one that might bring the factions warring over the Dane’s Pad together or, possibly, be responsible for the absolute destruction of local academia.
Let’s go back to Dowbridge on the eastern outskirts of Kirkham and take a closer look...not at the Dane’s Pad (that allegedly leaves the fort by its northern gate) but at our own suspected highway emerging from the fort’s western exit. Roman forts always had four gateways, accompanied by an equal number of military roads leading in and out. At Dowbridge these, as viewed anticlockwise, lead firstly to a ford across the Ribble on the south, secondly to Ribchester on the east, thirdly the Dane’s Pad to the north and…well…fourthly, apparently nowhere to the west because nobody so far has progressed beyond the Dane’s Pad.
The existence of the Roman fort at Dowbridge has been acknowledged since Victorian times, the numerous finds emerging from both the site and the road connecting it to Ribchester even then causing endless speculation and argument. For example, at St. John’s Church in Lund can be found the Roman altar shown in the photograph below, depicting, apparently, three mother goddesses. It was reputedly found on the surface of the Ribchester to Dowbridge road.

In 1800, at Dowbridge itself, a shield boss was discovered by Mr Willacy in a small stream adjoining ‘New England Spring’. Suggestions of votive offerings to the goddess Minerva were, of course, put forward. The original boss is now housed by the British Museum and is illustrated below. (As you’ve probably noticed, we don’t have an original photograph but our illustration is accurate enough, believe me.)

The same Mr. Willacy also apparently discovered two coins of the Emperor Adrian and told William Thornber (who later recorded the information in an essay for the Lancashire and Cheshire Historical Society) of the ruins of a square fortress at Dowbridge with a red sandstone floor.
In 1840, a Mr. Loxham (Victorians had a habit of not recording Christian names) discovered, in the same area, an urn filled with large bones, pieces of skull and an amulet.
Naturally these, along with countless other finds such as the piece of decorated Samian ware illustrated below (again, no photograph, but we’re sure you can live with the drawing), strongly suggested the fort’s existence but it wasn’t until over a century and a half later (in 1994 to be exact) that any professional archaeology was conducted on the site.

The excavation was conducted by the Lancaster University Archaeological Unit, who soon discovered that the fort had existed for over one hundred years before becoming redundant. It had been remodelled at least three times.
Phase one consisted of a simple Agricolan fort, reckoned to have been constructed as part of the Roman military advancement northwards through Brigante territory around the mid first century.
Phase two saw the basic camp transformed into a fortlet or signal station. During the revamping process the defensive ditches were re-cut.
Phase three took place around the start of the second century, when a larger fort was built on the site of its earlier incarnations. By the middle of the second century, however, it had been abandoned. Some historians have suggested that it was demoted to a simple storage depot in later life.
Following the excavation a number of houses were built on the site, thus buggering up any future investigations, so let’s hope Lancaster University did the best job that they could at the time. Exactly why the cabbage field three hundred yards away couldn’t have made an alternative location for redevelopment is a matter for the authorities to debate.
Whatever…getting back to our coastal road, as we’ve already said it’s highly probable that a Roman highway ran from the western exit of Dowbridge fort, through, or at least close to, Wrea Green, towards St. Anne’s where it turned abruptly north and followed the coastline up through Blackpool.
Which is where, unfortunately, due to restricted space and the fact that we’ve gabbled too much, we’ll have to leave it for this week. In part two of this article we’ll examine some of the evidence that backs up our claims so far, so whatever you do, make sure to bookmark this site and return in seven day’s time.

Another Mid-Week-ish Posting…

Okay…first things first. Michelle and I (some people will be glad to read) have resigned from Wyre Archaeology. There are several reasons for our sudden departure but, after a great deal of ‘umming’ and ‘arhing’, we thought it best not to air our dirty laundry in public. However, we are continuing with our historical and archaeological researches, we will be updating this web site (of course) as normal and we will be writing more books (so the Amazonian Rainforests aren’t safe yet)…and we’ll even be conducting the odd independent excavation when we manage to land one…so anybody who wants to stay in touch with us please drop us a line at our usual e-mail address. (What do you mean you haven’t got it? We handed out those little cards a few weeks ago at one of the meetings, remember? It’s not our fault if you threw it in the bin. Tell you what, leave us a message over at the forum with your e-mail address in it and we’ll get back in touch.)

Now then, regarding Saturday’s dig (or, to be exact, our last ever dig with the society). What did we discover?

Well, it would appear that the only thing surrounding our four enigmatic stones was a large red clay floor. (It was a floor and not glacial deposit. We can tell because there was soil beneath.) Oh, and we found a piece of what appears to be Roman pottery.

Apart from that we’re none the wiser. Regardless, here’s a photograph of the back of Fiona's head just for the record.

Lastly, for now, here’s our latest ‘Trumpet Blowing Exercise’ from the Garstang Courier. Once again, thanks to Anthony Coppin for a great review and we’re glad you enjoyed it.

Usual update on Friday folks, so don’t abandon us just yet, will you?

Addendum: The following article appeared in the Evening Gazette on Monday night. We were actually expecting an article about Saturday's dig, so we were surprised to come across this:

The Legacy of Nateby

Okay...this one's for John as requested over at the forum. (Yes...the link's still there in the right hand column and you still don't need to register to leave a comment, start a subject, post a response or ask a question etc. Well...I'm nothing if not optimistic.)

Anyway...few residents of the Fylde and Wyre (despite our best efforts to inform them otherwise) realise that Nateby is sitting on top of an archaeological goldmine. But it is, and examples of our ancient history beneath this village can be found in banjo-shaped earthworks (most likely Iron Age settlements), a Romano/British road, a henge ten times the size of Stonehenge and even a rare prehistoric construction known as a pile settlement. (We’ve even produced a slideshow of some of the more prominent earthworks that can be found on the right hand side bar of this website, but somehow we get the feeling that nobody’s bothered to look yet.)
Let’s start with the road.
In 1995 several sections of it were excavated by John Salisbury and Neil Thompson of the Pilling Historical Society. It was eighteen feet wide, cambered and surfaced with cobblestones. True to the construction of Roman roads everywhere it had a ditch running along either side. In October 2003 two denarii, a silver ‘Tiberius’ and a bronze ‘Claudius’, were discovered on its surface thus confirming its antiquity.

The road originally ran from Garstang, through Nateby and Out Rawcliffe towards Hambleton before reaching an old ford across the Wyre that once connected Wardley’s Creek to Stanah.
Because it’s underground, of course, it’s difficult to spot.
The henge, on the other hand, is plainly on view. Or at least, part of it is. In the field to the east of Nateby Lodge on the corner of Hoole Lane is an embankment, approximately six hundred and fifty feet in diameter. This earthwork loops around the lodge, creates a dip in Rawcliffe Road and then continues back on itself in a perfect circle.
Hopefully the aerial photograph below should help explain matters.

In February 1996 P. Johnson of the University of London Archaeological Unit took a look, and recorded it as a henge, estimating its age as roughly 2,500 BC.
Also in 1996 a team of excavators, once again under the guidance of the Pilling Historical Society, dug into another suspicious mound close to Humblescough Farm. About two feet below the surface they unearthed a large amount of timber, as can be seen in the photograph below.

What they’d discovered (at least in Neil Thompson’s view) was a pile settlement that had once stood at end of a stretch of water known as Ainspool Lake. (Personally we’re more inclined to believe that it was lakeside settlement similar to Star Carr, but that's a debate that'll no doubt run forever.)
It seemed that our local tribe had felled the trees around the lake and placed them on the bed in rectangular sections. Once their artificial island had been constructed, they threw up a bank of earth for additional defence. Still visible in this embankment today are three entrances that the Celts left open to accommodate wooden causeways.Later that same year Pilling Historical Society conducted a second excavation. This time post holes belonging to a round house were discovered.

It was estimated that the pile settlement could have held up to twenty such buildings. This was obviously either a sizable village or the home of an important chieftain.Numerous other discoveries have been made around Nateby, from Roman brooches to Celtic Axes, mediaeval signet rings and Neolithic hammers. And no doubt there are hundreds more still waiting to be excavated. So next time you’re driving home please try to remember that that annoying bump in the road that keeps damaging your exhaust might have been put there thousands of years ago, and wasn’t designed to annoy you personally.