Ghostly Goings on at Goosnargh

This is Chingle Hall -- short, squat and not particularly attractive to look at -- although not as repulsive as Susan Boyle, of course, but then again, what is? However, the place is replete with dark history and ghosties and ghoulies and things that go bump in the garderobe. (And before anybody complains, we didn’t have a camera on us last time we went, so we’ve had to borrow the following photographs from the various contributors to the Fylde and Wyre Antiquarian forum. Cheers for them.)


History first, then -- the hall was built in 1260 by Sir Adam de Singleton, after whom it was named. Sort of. It was originally called Shingle Hall, because, let’s face it, they weren’t very good at spelling stuff back in those days.
Not only is Chingle Hall allegedly the most haunted house in Britain (which is going some you’ve got to admit) but it’s also the oldest inhabited brick building.
Yes…you did read that correctly. Now how’s that for a well kept secret? (Actually, it’s not that well kept because it’s mentioned at Wikipedia, which is where I’m nicking most of this stuff from.)
One or two bits might even be older. For example, again according to Wikipedia so whether it’s true or not is anybody’s guess, some of the ceiling beams in the chapel were apparently tested by scientists at some point or other and were found to be ancient and containing a large amount of salt. The current theory is that they belonged to a Viking longship.
Right, it’s time for our first ghost story. One member of the Singleton family, Eleanor, was reportedly kept prisoner in her room for twelve years before mysteriously dying/being bumped off at the age of seventeen. Over the intervening centuries (although mainly in the last few decades I suspect) visitors to Eleanor’s bedroom have felt unearthly fingers tugging at their clothing and smelt ghostly wafts of lavender drifting ethereally up their nostrils (nothing to do with the josticks hidden behind the bedstead). Some people have also seen orbs floating round the ceiling. (Insert your own pun here.)
Getting back to the history proper, in 1620 John Wall, a notorious catholic priest, was born at Chingle Hall. Obviously he wasn’t a catholic priest when he was born. That’s just my bad grammar. He was actually ordained in 1641. Now, the more historically observant amongst our reader/s will no doubt have realised that being a catholic priest in 1641 wasn’t exactly the brightest of career options. Catholicism was illegal at the time (Queen Mary's persecution of the protestants some years before hadn’t exactly received the warm reception that you might have expected). Regardless of this, what with Lancashire being the stronghold for Catholics that it was, Father Wall continued to use his home as a place of worship.
The building is littered with priest holes and secret compartments, like the one in the photograph taken by John Allen-Davies below, where all the paraphernalia that Catholics utilize during mass (such as those burning handbag things that they swing about on ropes and stuff) were hidden in case any unexpected soldiers turned up.


In 1678 John Wall was arrested, whisked off to Worcester gaol, given the choice between life and Catholicism, chose the wrong one and was promptly hung, drawn and quartered. The various parts of his anatomy were donated to his colleagues, who after a brief discussion about the possibilities of some entertaining items of novelty furniture (no, not really, I just made that bit up) buried most of them in St. Oswald's churchyard. The head, however, was donated to some monks at Worcester, possibly for football practice.



I vaguely remember somebody telling me once that whenever anybody photographed a particular niche inside Chingle Hall, the resulting image contained the ghostly head of John Wall himself, screaming horribly. Oddly enough I’ve never actually seen any of these spectral photographs in paranormal books or on the telly or anywhere. I suspect that somebody was pulling my leg. Perhaps it was Eleanor Singleton.
Anyhow, in 1764 Chingle Hall passed into the hands of the Farrington family; another group of fanatical Catholics with nothing better to do at weekends, who set about building more priest holes and escape tunnels. All of this probably explains why so many ghostly monks are still stomping around the building. In the 1997 (once again according to Wikipedia, so make of it what you will):

“…parapsychologist Darren Done had a unique experience. As he stood at the window of the landing, preparing to film an area outside where sightings of a ghostly monk have been reported, he claims he was suddenly knocked in the face with such force that he fell to the ground, receiving a cut and swelling to his nose.”

Catholic monks, eh? No wonder nobody liked them.
A man with shoulder length hair has apparently been witnessed on several occasions passing the window of the priest's room. Obviously he had very long legs, because the window’s on the first floor.
To be honest there are dozens of ghost stories connected with Chingle Hall, from skeletons buried under windowsills to ghostly hands shuffling bricks about. Cromwellian soldiers have marched down the drive and pulled the spark plugs out of cars. I even remember an item on Nationwide many years ago in which the reporter received a crack on the head by a low flying shield. Perhaps a pinch of salt squeezed from the ancient ceiling beams should be added to the lot of them, the amount of seasoning required depending on your personal level of scepticism.
Back in the eighties, however, I met a bloke in the Traveller’s Rest one night who insisted that he’d had a paranormal experience at Chingle Hall during a charity sleep over. He even produced a cassette recording to ‘prove it’ which he played to me on his stereo in the car park.
“They were all sceptics at first,” he insisted. “An’ we’re not talking about a bunch o’ soft gets ’ere neither. They were all well-built working class brickies what were there.”
The recording itself was muffled, but ran something along the lines of:

“Who’s drunk all t’ beer?”
“Get the microphone out o’ y’r undies, y’ dirty sod.”
“Gaz is running round wi’ no clothes on.”

The conversation continued in this fashion for some time. Just as the late night belching was starting to subside however it was interrupted by a series of difficult to interpret noises. My associate (who shall remain nameless for reasons that should be obvious by now) explained that some large dark presence had moved across the room. A low, almost inaudible moan broke the stillness and a massive dent suddenly appeared in the table on which, a few short moments before, he’d been lying, attempting to set fire to his own flatulence.
“The table was at least twelve inches thick!” he informed me.
At this point the recording broke into pandemonium as half a dozen terrified brickies, quickly reverting to the mental state of five year olds, all attempted to squeeze through one small doorway at once.

“Y’re stood on me foot!”
“Something’s got ’old o’ me!”
“AAAAAAAArgh!”

Exit (pursued by a bear).

Let’s conclude then with one last photograph, taken several decades ago by the looks of it, of John Davies-Allen (Wyre Archaeology Expert in Building Techniques) standing on the bridge across Chingle Hall’s moat. There’s nothing particularly historical or paranormal about it, I’m afraid, but I couldn’t think of any other way to end this guided tour.

The Fylde and Wyre Antiquarian Guide to Blacksmithing

Right…it’s time for another article based on a display at the Fylde Country Life Museum (which, effectively, means tarting up one of the old information boards and saving ourselves a great deal of bother in pulling together a brand new posting.)
So, where to begin? Well, up until recently every rural community (from Rawcliffe to Thornton…from Bodkin Hall to…well…some other village that we know once had a blacksmith’s in it…and possibly even one or two places outside the Wyre as well) required a blacksmith’s for the production of metalwork.
Against most people’s preconceptions, however, it wasn’t necessarily the blacksmith’s job to shoe horses. This task was actually down to the ‘Farrier’. (Next time you’re in the cinema and this mistake crops up in the film you’re watching, you have my full permission to shout out the error of the cinematographer’s ways at the top of your voice.)
Both farriers and blacksmiths, of course, needed a ‘Forge’ to conduct their trade. The one in our illustration below (and, not wanting to endless repeat myself throughout this article, let’s just say at the beginning that all of the items contained herein can be found, in their original state, at the Fylde Country Life Museum…probably) dates from around the 1940s/50s.


It was constructed from iron casting and lined with firebricks to withstand the immense heat generated inside it…apparently.
The forge was fuelled by oxygen pumped along the ‘Tuein Funnel’ (Don’t ask…I just write down what the curators tell me. I seldom ask questions) from the hand-operated ‘Bellows’ (illustrated below) and across the hot coals.


Because the bellows were so close to the heat the ‘Tueiron’ (again, there’s no point in asking…I’ve told you before, I haven’t got a clue) leading into the forge was surrounded by a water jacket. The bellows were only used when the iron was ready to be placed in the fire.
A skilled metal worker could recognise the temperature of the metal by its colour. Black heat, although by no means safe to touch with naked hands, was the coolest, red the intermediate stage and white the hottest.
I think.
I seem to remember Tony Bloomer (curator and old friend of mine) telling me I’d got the colours mixed up on several occasions. Unfortunately Tony’s no longer with us, and I can’t remember now whether I ever sorted them out or not. All matters considered, if you’re concerned about it, it might be best if you looked up the subject somewhere else.
Right…once the metal was hot enough to be worked it was lifted from the forge using ‘Tongs’ (because picking it up with your fingers would be a bit stupid really) and carried across to the ‘Anvil’.


Here it was hammered into shape (no I’m not going to draw up a picture of a hammer…there are limits, you know) before losing its pliability.
The rounded point on the anvil (as demonstrated in the drawing below…which contains a hammer after all…so you can stop penning those letters of complaint) came in handy for bending horseshoes into shape. Incidentally, the nail-holes in horseshoes were actually punched whilst the metal was still hot, rather than being drilled as most people wrongly believe.
Perhaps.
On reflection, most people have probably never thought about it…but what the heck?


Is it my imagination or do those arms look a bit on the thin side for a blacksmith? Is there anybody still actually reading this? Would you admit it if you were?
Whatever the case, let’s move swiftly on.


The square indentation on the top of the anvil (as beautifully illustrated using a 4b pencil on a bit of scrap paper courtesy of George above) was designed to accommodate other tools, such as the ‘Swage’.
Swages were used to shape items such as gate catches and chains. They came in two sections; a bottom piece that fitted into the anvil as mentioned above, and a top piece that was held by tongs.
Other tools designed to fit into the anvil were ‘Hardies’. (Not to be confused with the lazy blacksmith who sat on his laurels and got the sack.) Hardies were upside-down chisels that allowed the metal to be struck from above.
In fact the number of tools found in the average forge was large enough to warrant their own specially constructed ‘Tool Rack’ (as seen below. Special discount this week only £10.99 including Tueiron attachment. Contact B&Q Homecare.)


Because the farrier’s job was ever so slightly different from a blacksmith’s, they had their own toolboxes, which looked a bit like this, or so I’ve been told:


These contained everything the farrier needed to shoe horses, such as knives, rasps, shoe nails, hammers and pincers. The kits were easy to carry although some farriers refused to take them near the horses for fear of spooking them.
And that’s enough education for one life I reckon. It’s time to stop this article immediately before everybody dies of boredom.

Saints, Norsemen and Upturned Boats

I’m seriously hoping that we haven’t covered this subject before somewhere, but I’m not about to plough my way through two years worth of articles to find out. I’m sure that if it all sounds vaguely familiar, somebody out there will be in touch to complain quicker than a chav at a ‘Back to Work’ seminar.
Anyhow, by the middle of the third century (as evidenced by the fact that worried Romans had buried their life savings in such far flung places as South Shore, Rossall and Preesall Hill and then never returned to retrieve them) the Roman Empire was becoming increasingly fractious, with troops leaving Britain’s shores in droves to defend other, more volatile, frontiers.
This withdrawal after a century or two, as you might expect, left our own defences severely weakened, and it was only a matter of time before the Saxons, the Jutes, the Angles and various other northern European nations attacked Britain from all quarters.
Or, at least, that’s how most southern-centric historians record our history. (Not to mention rather a lot of our own, slightly misguided local ‘researchers’.) Regardless of what the textbooks say, true to the nature of the Fylde coast our own population appears to have acted somewhat differently. In fact evidence suggests that, unlike the Celts (or more strictly speaking the Romano-British) who in the southeast were valiantly fending off the Saxons, our local post-Roman residents were establishing trade links with the Irish and the Norse by encouraging pioneering settlers to join their ranks. (There’s one thing I’ll say for the residents of Fylde and Wyre: They’re never racist if said interlopers have brought plenty of money with them.)
Amongst these new settlers, or so legend has it, was a certain Saint Patrick. Despite being recognised nowadays as the patron saint of Ireland, Patrick more than likely hailed from Carlisle, and, having converted the Irish, he returned to the northwest of England to set about Christianising his own people.
The tale goes that Patrick crossed the Irish sea on a millstone, perhaps not the most intelligent method of travel on reflection, landed at Heysham and built the chapel illustrated below, on the cliff’s edge.


After his death in 490 A.D. (ahem…apparently) he was buried in the first of Heysham’s rock-hewn graves.
The fact that the chapel appears to date from about 750 A.D. hasn’t quenched this local myth, but Patrick’s almost unique philosophy (well, it’s certainly unique by modern standards) of blending Paganism with Christianity leads us, inevitably, back to those keeills that we’ve mentioned on several occasions in the past.
Perhaps now would be a good time to elaborate.
Within fifty years of Patrick’s death, keeills had started to spring up all over the Fylde and Wyre. These small, incredibly simple churches were scattered as far as Scotland to the north, North Wales to the south and the Isle of Man to the west. Missionaries constructed many of them by simply upturning their boats and using them for roofs. Some historians even believe that this is where the word ‘keeill’ originates, a boat’s keel, of course, being its underside. ‘Manks Antiquities’, written by P. M. C. Kermode and W. A. Herdman, has a different opinion: “The Manx word keeill derived from the Latin Cella, or, as has been supposed, from an older Celtic word meaning a grave.”
The connection between keeills and graves isn’t as obscure as it might at first sound. Let’s return to ‘Manks Antiquities’: “A remarkable thing is that many keeills prove to have been erected on older heathen burial sites which, so far, appear to all have been of Bronze Age – not only worked flints and charcoal and burnt bones being found, but fragments of pottery of that period.”
Ancestral burial grounds were extremely sacred places...especially for those lying in them. The idea that culdees (the keeill equivalent of ministers) were given permission to erect their churches on such sites suggests that some of them were either related (or, at least, in some manner linked) to the Celtic chieftains who acted as guardians to such property.
Exactly how many druidical practices were married into this new Christian doctrine it’s difficult to say.
So I won’t.
However, as late as the nineteenth century in some of the more isolated Scottish locations, Pagan charms were still being combined with Christian hymns during church services. If you can pin down a copy of the ‘Carmina Gadelica’ published in 1900, which contains a collection of such hymns and incantations, you’ll see what we mean.
(I don’t use the word ‘IF’ in that context, of course, to imply that anybody who now takes up the challenge to search out that particular work is in any way a geek who seriously needs to get out more. I’d never suggest a thing like that. Michelle’d kill me if I did.)
All of which leads us to All Hallows church in Bispham, which, all matters considered, might well have originally been the site of a keeill. What drives us to this conclusion? Well, let’s start some distance away at the gates Carleton crematorium and Robins Lane, illustrated below.


As you can probably see from the drawing, Robin’s Lane was originally a sunken track, hollow in the centre with banks on either side. Further along the lane the track becomes so deep-set and the trees on its banks so over-hanging that, as kids, we would refer to it as ‘The Valley of the Shadow of Death’. (We might have been a bit on the morbid side as kids now that I come to look back. I blame the school chaplain myself, and the way he always insisted on burying the school pets with such pomp and ceremony. Sometimes he wouldn’t even wait until they were dead.)
Nowadays a bridle path has been added and the lane itself raised, but it’s still sunken enough to recognise it as a hollow way, or in other words, a Celtic road.
Like most Celtic roads connected to keeills it also has a number of boggarts along its route, ranging from a green-faced ghost that apparently haunted the gates of the crematorium, (though some have speculated that this was just one of the local farmhands on his way home from the pub one night having consumed too many vodkas) to formless white apparitions and headless men in long, shaggy coats.
An article written by Melanie Warren, published in Poulton Life magazine in 1996, recalled that: “A young friend of mine, hearing that I had taken the dogs down Robins Lane one summer evening, quite innocently told me that nothing would induce her to take the same route - as a child, she and all her friends had believed that in one of the many ponds which lie along the path there lurked a malevolent 'red hand'...”
Yes…it’s an odd one that. ‘Thing’ from the Addams Family, suffering from sunburn, springs to mind.
Melanie Warren went on to explain that Maisie Allen, a local expert on folklore: “…informed me that many farms had a 'hand' insignia over their doorways, carved in red stone. Quite possibly one of these artefacts had found it's way into a local pond.”
(I was thinking of having a similar sculpture over my front door with the middle digit extended as a warning to Jehovah’s Witnesses.)
If that sounds familiar then it’s hardly surprising because we mentioned in a much earlier article that Reverend Bulpit recorded an ‘open hand sculpture’ at Leys Farm on Warbreck Hill, connecting it to holy relics concealed inside ancient churches. And, of course, as also mentioned in the same article, Leys Farm itself appears to have been built on top of a keeill. In the summer of 2007, accompanied by Fiona, we took a stroll down Robins Lane ourselves, in search of one of these carvings.
We didn’t find one.
We didn’t encounter any boggarts either come to that matter.
We saw a rabbit, but that’s not quite the same thing.
However, Robins Lane was almost certainly a keeill road and originally ran to All Hallows church. Nowadays, the lane has been amputated at its junction with Kincraig Road, but, according to old maps, originally it continued around the pond (where as children we used to hunt frogs, until Andrew Grimshaw ate one too many and threw up on his mum’s new carpet) before heading off down what is nowadays All Saints Road.
We’ve drawn up the map below to help our reader make sense of all this.


(Yeah…right…that should do it. Especially seeing as most of the readers of this board haven’t got a clue where Bispham is.)
Now, where there are keeill roads there are, or rather were, keeill crosses; tall wayside monoliths set in stone bases, designed to draw the attention of early Celtic/Norse travellers to the keeill’s existence…we assume.
Such monoliths were the forerunners of the more elaborately carved Norse crosses, their own carvings generally restricted to simple crosses chiselled into their roughly hewn shafts.
In Bispham’s case the cross shaft most likely stood on what is now the gala field (very possibly soon to be a supermarket, but that’s another story), in an area marked on old tithe maps as ‘Cross House’. The house itself, even by the 1840s, had long since vanished, but a quick rummage around in the hedge soon revealed the gatepost illustrated below, standing sentry on an isolated bank and acting as the most likely candidate for the keeill cross from which the house undoubtedly took its name.


Admittedly there are, to the best of my knowledge, no carvings on this monolith (I mean, there might be, but I wasn’t about to get torn to shreds by the hawthorn bush surrounding it whilst I was trying to find out) but over the years the Fylde’s inclement weather has considerably defaced the post, so it’s hardly surprising.
As well as standing on the summit of a hill (if you could somehow remove the housing estates to the west of the graveyard, you’d see what a remarkable view it once afforded), as was more often than not the case with both keeills and prehistoric burial grounds, All Hallows church also once had its own ‘holy well’. This, of course, is a good indication of its prehistoric roots. Although rebuilt in the seventeenth century, All Hallows church maintains evidences of an earlier structure dating back to the Norman times, firstly in the shape of a carved archway just within the porch, and secondly in the form of two circular Saxon steps constituting the base of a later cross-shaft in the churchyard. Almost certainly the grounds constituted a significant religious site, predating both of these ancient artefacts.
Have you noticed how these articles are getting longer and longer as the winter draws on? On which note it might be best if I stopped right about now.

Up Spen Dyke without a Paddle

We’ve borrowed the following article from our up-and-coming work-in-progress ‘The History of Blackpool (from the Marton Coracle Builder to Thomas Tyldesley)’ – another book with a long-winded title, but one that does exactly what it says on the cover nonetheless. Hopefully copies of…er…this book (I’m not about to repeat the title because my fingers are going numb) will be available next year…when we’ve finished with it.
Anyhow…amongst the footnotes of the Victoria County History can be found the following record, relating to William de Sellerdale, vicar of Poulton-le-Fylde: “This vicar in 1332 came to an agreement with the prior of Lytham as to the tithe of fish taken on the Warthes north or south of the Milne Pool of Layton.”
As you might already have gathered, the word ‘warthes’ here shouldn’t be regarded as a misspelling of ‘wharfs’ but rather an older name derived from the Norse word ‘vartha’ (as in Warthbreck/Warbreck) meaning ‘guard tower’. (Apologies for the black and white map, but it was drawn up for the book and I can’t be bothered colouring it in at this stage of the game.)

Milne Pool was the name given to the section of Spend Dyke that emptied into the sea at Manchester Square, so it’s reasonable to assume that two Norse towers originally straddled the dyke at this location.
Nowadays, remaining Norse watchtowers are extremely rare, and, even on a worldwide basis, only the occasional ruined lower floor can be found. Archaeologists, however, generally agree that most were constructed from stone blocks and could reach up to five storeys in height.
In order to understand what was so important about the entrance to Spen Dyke that it required constantly manned guard posts to protect it, we need to look a little further inland. The dyke itself originally drained from Marton Mere and was wide enough to sail boats along. As recorded, once again, in the Victoria County History, several fieldnames in the area suggest that the Norse were using the dyke to ply their trade.
For example, ‘Faethewra’, located somewhere in Marton although, unfortunately, the exact site is now lost to posterity, is a Norse word that can be broken down into the components ‘faethe’ meaning ‘cold or melancholy’ and ‘wra’ meaning ‘shipyard or berth’.
Another fieldname that crops up in the same district is the rather more complicated ‘Kettlesholmewathwra’. It’s recorded in documents from the thirteenth century belonging to Whalley Abbey as: “Half a selion in Marton town fields, lying between the land of William de Marton and Amery, son of Simon de Thornton.”
Let’s break the name down into easier-to-handle segments. A ‘kettle’, more or less, was simply a kettle, or, perhaps, more precisely a ‘cauldron’. This more often than not referred to a feature in the landscape, rather than the sort of cauldron used for making stew. ‘Holme’, as we’ve probably mentioned in some previous article or other, was the Norse word for an ‘island’ or ‘bend in a river’. ‘Wath’ meant simply ‘ford’, and ‘Wra’, again, refers to a ‘shipyard’ or ‘berth’.
So, combining all those elements together we have the ‘shipyard by the ford to the island in the cauldron shaped lake or marsh.’
Again, the County History fails to mention exactly where Kettlesholmewathwra was located, but we’re sure that some ingenious landscape detective with more time on their hands than we currently have could work it out.

Norse ships came in two main varieties; the ‘drekar’, or dragon-headed longship, for carrying troops, and the ‘knarr’, an ocean-going cargo vessel that was higher and wider than a longship, with cargo decks at the front and stern and fewer oars. The latter was designed specifically for ease of navigation in narrow channels, such as Spen Dyke.
They were constructed by means of a broad axe rather than a saw, carpenters splitting the oak trunks into long, thin planks. These were fastened together with iron nails, each plank overlapping the next in what’s known as a ‘clinker’ technique. Crossbeams were added to create the deck and seats, and a massive beam was added along the keel in order to support the mast. Because of their unique design, Norse ships could achieve speeds of fourteen knots steered using a single rudder on the 'starboard' (another Norse word referring to the ‘steering board’).
Another name local to Marton documented in the Whalley Abbey records is: “Half an oxgang and two acres with a messuage next to the house of Richard Russel in the east part of Suterdale.”
Suterdale, of course, is now long since gone. The ‘dale’ part of the name, however, is probably self-explanatory, whereas the ‘Suter’ is again a Norse word, on this occasion meaning ‘Tanner’. Tanning was the process by which leather was made more pliable for use in belts, gloves and boots. It involved, as you might expect, the use of tannins, chemical compounds found in certain trees and shrubs, oak bark being the main source in Britain.
Tannins react with the skins, changing their chemical composition. To achieve this, the skins were first soaked in pits filled with water and oak bark. To obtain softer, more elastic leather, the skins were swollen before the process began by being suspended in an infusion of water and animal dung, dog excrement, apparently, being the most effective.
Bearing this in mind, it would be reasonable to assume that, wherever Suterdale was located, it probably wouldn’t be close to, or directly downwind of, of any settlements.
Although none have, as yet, been discovered around Blackpool, the collection of Norse shoes and boots illustrated below was discovered at Coppergate in York. These are typical of the sort of simple but effective footwear preferred by the Norse. The sole was shaped from a single, flat piece of leather and stitched to the upper sections. Once it had worn down through use, it was simply thrown away and replaced with a new one.

A couple more names worth recording before we close this particular article are ‘Redcarr’ in Marton and ‘Lithcarr’, situated somewhere between Marton and Lytham. Both refer in part to a type of heavy clay, although in Northumbria the word ‘carr’ could also mean ‘large stones’. Once again, to the best of our knowledge, both locations are nowadays lost, although their previous existence does add substance to the notion that the Norse were once the dominant race around Blackpool.
So there you go. Keep your eyes peeled for the finished book (working on the assumption that this little snippet hasn’t put you off too much) or write to us in advance and we’ll reserve you a copy because it’s bound to be an instant best seller. (Hey…we're all entitled to our fantasies.)

The Path to the Rath

Apologies in advance for the extremely low quality of some of this week's graphics. We've had this article hanging around on our hard drive for some considerable time now. It's one of those postings that we never quite got around to putting up for one reason or another (possibly because we didn't want to drive our one remaining reader away through boredom) and, somewhere down the line, the original photographs have all been lost. However, we've tried our best under the circumstances (which doesn't amount to much, I must admit).
Anyhow...onwards...

Some time ago we mentioned (or at least I think I did…it’s hard to tell these days…it might just have been one of those senior moments, which I'm experiencing a lot more frequently nowadays) that one of the most interesting field names around Stanah and Little Thornton was that of Kelbreck.
The name implies (as with most ‘Kelbreck’, ‘Kilbreck’, Kilcrash’ and ‘Kiltree’ fieldnames) that an ancient keeill once stood on the brow of the hill. Keeills, as we’ve mentioned before but feel we ought to recap about, were small but significant early (fifth to eleventh century) churches/village-wise-man-hovels, half Pagan/half Christian, run by either the first missionaries from abroad or by the last of the semi-converted druids, known as culdees. Merlin, from the Arthurian legends, was probably one such culdee, half practical, half mystical charmer and half spiritual. (Yes, we know, that makes 150% but we said they were mysterious, didn’t we?)
Keeills themselves were often built of wood, sometimes being simply the remains of the upturned boat in which the missionary had travelled…hence the name keeill (or keel), although other sources suggest that the name derives from Cela de, meaning ‘Glory of God’. At other times they were constructed of stone. Either way, they were generally situated between ancient villages (for maximum commercial potential) close to Roman roads or Celtic Old Ways, their presence denoted by pre-Norse style keeill crosses such as those at Cabus and Forton.
All of which is fascinating, we’re sure you agree, but we’ve already covered this subject before so no doubt you’re asking yourselves: “What else is new?”
Well, the aerial photograph below, that’s what, available (as you can probably surmise from the Lancashire County Council logo plastered over it) at Mario Maps.

It was taken by the Ministry of Defence (or at least, we assume it was) in the 1940s and, like other black-and-white aerial photographs of this period, shows some interesting features that don’t appear on other images.
In this instance we refer the reader to the white line running northeast from Raikes Road to the brow of Kelbreck Field. A buried, cobbled track perhaps?Well…yes, very probably actually. Does anyone remember a similar line visible on our 1940s aerial photograph of Bourne Hill? Let’s just remind you then.

The photograph above demonstrates what we’re talking about. In Bourne Hill’s case, a quick trench or two revealed that the road lay just below the surface, was about eight feet wide, constructed from beach stones and edged with bright orange clay. It also followed the route you’d expect an Iron Age cobbled track to follow…through both sides of the triangular entrance in the defensive embankments and along the south slope of the settlement, which just goes to show, if nothing else, that features invisible in reality can often be recorded on 1940s aerial photographs.
Back to Stanah then where, nowadays, the track to the brow of Kelbreck is nowhere to be seen. In fact, as illustrated by the photograph below, there’s no sign of the building or possible rath that once surrounded it either.

However, a cursory glance at old field maps (and, indeed, the aerial photograph itself) shows us that the hedge line (most likely Mediaeval) in the south-west corner of the field was forced to detour around the track, giving us some indication of how old this feature might actually be. Incidentally, Ordnance Survey maps dating back to the 40s (the same decade that our aerial photograph was taken) don’t record the track either, which, if it had been visible at the time, they would have done.
It’s natural to assume, therefore, that this is the original track to the keeill. A probe in the ground should easily locate it (providing it hasn’t been ploughed out over the intervening years, of course) and should lead the archaeologist straight to the location of the building itself. And the 1940s aerial photograph might be able to tell us a little more yet about the site. The second ‘cobbled track’ leading away from the keeill towards Bulker Ford, for example, suggests that residents at Skippool’s prehistoric settlement, or possibly even from the early villages across the Wyre, once frequented our Culdee. This section of track runs through a field called ‘Knipper Bone’ which, considering that keeills were often built on Pagan burial grounds, might give us some indication as to how the field came by its epithet.
To the north (if you look again at the aerial photograph) you might just be able to determine a possible third track leading through the hedge towards Boggart Field at Stanah. As we mentioned in a much earlier article here at the Fylde and Wyre Antiquarian, entitled ‘When the Hampson Dobby met the Brunsa Hobby’ Boggarts, Dobbies, Culdees and Druids are all, basically, one and the same which, again, might explain the name of this field. Not only that but we can even hazard a guess at our culdee’s appearance: Tall and thin, wearing a shaggy woollen long-coat and dragging a hare (possibly albino) around behind him on a length of string…true to the form of dobbies, hobbies and boggarts everywhere.
Right…that’s about enough of that for now. It’s time for a large coffee before I nod off completely.

Quaggy Meols

Ever heard of a place called Quaggy Meols? Hardly surprising if you haven’t; it’s a name that’s fallen out of common usage nowadays. How about North Cape? Again, a title that would have been familiar to Fylde and Wyre residents during the nineteenth century but which, two hundred years later, is now as obscure as a cultured grockle.
Well, both locations were (and indeed still are) basically one and the same, this description by H. Thompson (one time Borough Engineer) possibly helping you pin it down: “Rabbits were the principle fauna and as men populated the district a few roamed across to note the possibilities of the area. It was so poor the no one appeared to desire it. It was termed ‘Quaggy Meols’, a combination of wet or marshy land and sand hills."

Yes, now you’ve got it. It’s Fleetwood, of course. (It was probably the rabbits that gave it away. And yes, that is a photograph of Fleetwood Marsh above, although, as far as I’m aware, there are no rabbits visible on it.) H. Thompson was speaking from an obviously biased (not to mention borderline objectionable) point of view, as most borough surveyors did back then. C. E. de Rance, for example, described the residents of Pilling as being prone to idiocy because of their reluctance to marry outside the family. This, actually, is still true today, of course, but it’s hardly the sort of comment you’d expect to find in a surveyor’s report.
The idea that ‘no one appeared to desire’ Quaggy Meols isn’t terribly accurate either. The Romans obviously found the place interesting enough (as evidenced by the various coin hoards discovered around the peninsula), as did the monks of Duelacres Abbey and their sheep, the prize rams of which they kept on Tup Hill, otherwise known as the Mount. And the local Celts were quite content to built their settlement on Bourne Hill. Come to that matter, the Norse had a liking for the place as well, because it’s from them that the name Quaggy Meols derives.
All of which, in a roundabout way, brings us to the question: “What exactly were the Norse up to at Fleetwood?” Well, how about this suggestion, concerning a similarly named Meols near the mouth of the Dee Estuary, from Julian Richard’s ‘Viking Age England’ (Yes…he’s the bloke off ‘Meet the Ancestors’ so he’s got a good idea what he’s talking about): “The name is derived from the Old Norse word for sandbank, melr, and it has been suggested that a pre-Viking beach market may have been taken over by Norse traders.”
Now we’ve got your attention. The idea of a Viking market on Fleetwood beach (obviously predating the modern day Fleetwood Market, and even the one granted through a charter by King John to the Duelacres’ lay-brothers in 1216) also explains the existence of Min End ford, another Norse name (although the ford itself was Celto-Roman) referring to the Wyre Estuary. It’s no wonder the Norse considered it important enough to give it a title. After all, once you’ve got your stalls set up, you have to encourage all those friendly shoppers from Over Wyre to spend their coffers on your wares, so it’d be worth keeping those sandstone blocks well and truly intact.
There is another Meols not a million miles removed from the Fylde and Wyre, North Meols, beyond the Ribble, somewhere in the general direction of Liverpool. And, according to Julian Richards, any place name ending with suffix ‘wick’ (such as Salwick) would also have been a Viking marketplace. Yes…those Norse were well up for turning a quick profit around this district, which probably explains why so many of them eventually settled down here.
Now, for a marketplace you also need a watering hole, if not for our ale-soused Norse men and their post Romano-Celtic customers, then for the animals being traded on the sands. And what do we have at the Fleetwood end of Min End ford (i.e. the patch of beach directly in front of the Lower Lighthouse)? We’ll give you three guesses.
Let’s turn to our old favourite, William Thornber, for a full description: “Leigh, in his Natural History of Lancashire, informs us that at Mine-End, at the mouth of the river, there is a purging water, which springs out of the sand. “This, no doubt,” he adds, “is the sea water which filters thro’ the sand, but by reason of the shortness of its filtration, (the spring lying so near the river,) or the looseness of the sand, the marine water is not perfectly dulcified, but retains a pleasing brackishness, not unlike that which is observable in the milk of a farrow cow, or one that has conceived.”
We’re not ones to let such claims go unchecked, so we set out in search of this ‘milk flavoured’ spring ourselves. And, of course, we found it, as can be seen in the photograph below, although ‘brackish’ and ‘pleasing’ are not words we’d use in association with its taste. In fact, the words we’d use are best off not being mentioned on a family site such as this.

Still, it’s interesting to imagine the Celts and the Norse getting steadily pickled together, their long ships beached in the spot where, nowadays, you tend to find Icelandic trawler undergoing maintenance and repairs, trading jewellery and sheep and horses and weapons and the latest in agricultural technology (such as spades and ploughs) and all sorts of other stuff (cosmetics such as eye shadow and make up were big with the Vikings…and not amongst the women either) on the shore at the river estuary.
So, just because some nineteenth century historians and borough surveyors with more cynicism than sense tend to dismiss the area as empty and desolate, don’t let them sway your opinion. There’s more to our quaggy humps and bumps than might, at first, meet the eye.

A Collection of 1950s Antiquarian Photographs

We were rummaging around in our highly unorganised under-the-bed collection of historical documents, photocopied news clippings and other assorted antiquarian papers the other day, in search of some article or other that we didn’t find anyway but we’re used to that happening by now, when we serendipitously came across the following collection of black and white photographs dating from the 1950s, given to us by the late, great Headlie Lawrenson a couple of years ago before his untimely death. (I’m knackered after that sentence.)

I’m not entirely sure if Headlie took these himself, but he was certainly involved in the digs that are pictured. Whatever the case, we found the photographs so fascinating when they were first presented to us that we’d always planned to write an article about them. Then, of course, we forgot. Until we found them again, that is.
So, the first of these gems shows a trench that’s been cut across the Walton-le-Dale to Lancaster Roman Road, at Kiln Trees Farm (originally written Kill Trees referring the boundary of a keeill) at Cabus. It was here that Headlie and his team also discovered Cabus cross lying on the road’s surface, and promptly picked it up and stuffed it back into its base at the crossroads where it stands to this day.

All right, so it doesn’t look like much, but what do you expect from a Box Brownie, or whatever it was they used to take the shot? We thought it was interesting anyhow…a never before published historical document recording the uncovering of an ancient highway not seen for almost two thousand years. Come on…it’s got to be worth posting, surely?
The next photograph shows a similar excavation, this time in the field adjacent to Street Bridge, and details the surface of the Ribchester to Lancaster Roman road.

This is actually a very important photograph, even if it doesn’t appear to show much. We revisited Street a year or so ago now, with Neil Thompson, and discovered that, running in two straight lines across the fields leading to Grizedale Beck, new cairns of cobble stones (obviously removed from the Roman highway) had been piled up every few yards. In years to come, this photograph might be the only proof left that the Roman road ever existed between these two locations at all. Well…this photograph and the next one below…which also shows the Roman road at Street Bridge, on this occasion having been excavated up to the actual banks of the Wyre.

The final photograph is absolutely brilliant in our opinion. We’re still at Street Bridge circa 1950, but this time we’re witnessing the discovery of another keeill cross. Just look at the size of it. It’s certainly up there with the Cabus cross, and the same, crude carving can clearly be seen etched into the shaft. That’s what these things look like before they’re snapped in half and used for gateposts.

What became of the Street Bridge keeill cross we just don’t know. We believe that Headlie and his mob re-erected it, as was their practice, at Street itself, but it disappeared during road widening works at some point or other and was never seen again.
It’s a good job we’ve got this photograph of it then.
On which note I’ve suddenly got the urge to dig out my camera and record some other historical titbits round the area for future antiquarians, before the local construction workers, ignorant farmers or money grabbing council planners destroy them too.

The Mystery of Broom Hill

Everyone knows that Garstang was originally a mediaeval market town filled, on fair days, with bellowing, rutting cattle and, for the rest of the time, with bellowing, rutting peasants. But how many people realise that Garstang has a far more ancient history? For example, on the outskirts of town stands an enigmatic mound known as Broom Hill that might well be of prehistoric construction.
For anybody wondering where Broom Hill is, it’s just north of the ford at Wyre Lane and can be easily recognised because…well, it looks like the photograph below.

The north-west side of the hill has been eaten away by the River Wyre over the centuries, revealing an extremely rare sight; the cross section of what appears to be a Bronze Age tumulus. (That’s a ‘burial mound’ for those not as familiar with archaeological terms as us know-it-alls.)
From the riverbank the observer can even see how this tumulus was built. Huge boulders were first laid down for the base, growing smaller in layers towards the top, the whole earthwork being filled in with sand as its engineers progressed. The photograph below (which isn’t exactly of high resolution we have to admit) does, to some extent, show this.

On the seventeenth of July, 1999, several members of the Pilling Historical Society visited the site. In their own words: “Over the years many ideas as to the purpose of this artificial mound have been submitted, from an Iron Age fort to a Saxon Moot Hill where the elders of Garstang met. A more likely theory is that here we have a Bronze Age burial tumulus or a round barrow, that was used much later in history as a Saxon Moot.”
The ‘prehistoric burial mound’ idea is borne out by the fact that the hill can be found at the junction of two waterways, the River Wyre and Grizedale Brook, typical of such burials everywhere.
Interestingly it also falls alongside the conjectured prehistoric highway running from Harris End Fell down to Nateby; again, not an uncommon practice.
Then again the ‘Saxon Moot Hill’ (a place where the Saxon elders met to hold their courts) might indicate that Broom Hill is the missing ‘Yolrungegreve’ as mentioned in the Court Rolls of 1324. This somewhat bizarre name can be broken down into ‘Yol’ (an elk), ‘run’ (a council meeting) and ‘greve’ (a barrow, from which we derive the modern word ‘grave’). So, was Broom Hill where the ‘Council of the Elk on the Barrow’ met?
The truth is, we just don’t know. It might just as easily have been of Viking construction. There are theories linking it to Thorolf Skallagrimson’s grave following the legendary battle of Vin Heath where his brother Egil: “…dug a grave there and laid Thorolf in it with his weapons and raiment…this done they heaped on stones and cast in soil.” Of course, this is speculation, but it would be nice to think that one of the most important lost battlegrounds of Britain took place just outside Garstang.
Whatever the case, Broom Hill was manmade and is very old, so if you’ve nothing better to do this weekend it might be worth taking a look.

Tapping into the Mains

Mains Hall at Little Singleton, as frequent visitors to this board will already be aware, holds a particular fascination for us on several accounts, those being 1) because Adele Yeomans who owns Mains drops by for a chat with us from time to time 2) because Most Haunted based one of their episodes there (and we always enjoy a good ghost story) and 3) because it’s just inside the border of the Fylde on the banks of the River Wyre (don’t worry…we’re not about to reopen the old Fylde/Wyre boundary debate) which makes it central to all matters Fylde and Wyre Antiquarian related…if that makes any sense.

Besides, on Wednesday August 15th 2007 Adele Yeomans gave Fiona, Michelle and myself a personal tour of her home and is even letting us return with our spades and trowels in the not too distant future to dig up her lawns, flowerbeds and other manicured areas. (How’s that for being trusting?) But the guided tour will have to wait for now, because this particular article concerns a completely different matter.
You see, the origin of the hall’s name remains a bit of a mystery. Some historians reckon that it derives from ‘Monks Hall’ as recorded on old maps…but, to be honest the ‘old maps’ or rather ‘old map (singular)’ was drawn up by Bowen in 1730 and…well…Mains Hall was known as Mains Hall well before that.
The hall itself dates back to at least the thirteenth century, or at least the estate does, when Sir Adam Banastre (knight, rogue, self-serving aristocrat and violent thug)’s grandfather had possession of it. But the meaning of the name ‘Mains’ was just as obscure back then as it is today.
So we conducted a bit of research and here’s what we found out.
To the northwest (rather approximately) of Mains Hall, at the gymkhana field at Skippool creek to be precise, evidence was discovered in the 1920s for a Bronze Age settlement in the form of Bronze Age pottery, red deer bones and flint weapons. (Yes, we know, this isn’t exactly news…but it is related to our conclusions so just bear with us.) Like most Bronze Age settlements this one appears to have survived until at least the Iron Age, rumours (and well founded rumours at that) of amphora discovered on the site being rife amongst local archaeologists.
The Romans seem to have improved the Celtic ford near by during their tenancy. After the Romans left the Norse moved in, naming the ford Aldwath (or Old Ford) for obvious reasons. As with most places around the Wyre evidence for the Norse living harmoniously with the Celts is strong at Skippool. All of the lands around Skippool and Poulton bear Celtic/Norse names and attributes.
Meanwhile, to the southwest of Mains Hall lies a place called Kirkstiles. This is a Saxon word referring to a church, implying that a Saxon village (most likely Little Singleton) originally stood at this location.
Between the two, in the area around Shard, as shown on old maps, was a place called Means. This was located about halfway between Shard Bridge and Mains Lane at an enigmatic kink in the road now long since ironed out. Don’t believe us? Okay…well below is a detail from Hennet’s map just to prove our point.

The word Means stems from the Saxon word 'Meannes' meaning 'jointly owned land'. As it falls directly between the Saxon village and the Celtic/Norse settlement it's reasonable to assume that, unlike the boundary ditches separating the Celtic/Norse lands from the Saxon village at Stanah, around Shard the two opposing peoples had reached an understanding.
Anyhow, after the Norman invasion no doubt all of this changed. Saxon/Celtic-Norse agreements would have been abandoned in favour of new Norman land ownership laws (otherwise known as subjugation). But the Saxon name for the territory stuck. When Mains Hall was built (on what was previously shared land but was now solely Norman owned) it took on board the original Saxon name, which gradually became corrupted over the centuries to Mains.
(We’re working on the scientific principle here that if the facts fit then we’re happy to accept them…until something better comes along.)
All of which goes to show that the estate on which Mains now stands was occupied and worked before the Domesday book. And when it comes to evidence of pre-Norman, possibly even prehistoric, occupation how does a midden full of cockleshells and chicken bones grab you? Adele sent us the photograph below showing just such a discovery, made when digging a ditch close by her new moat.

So exactly how old is Mains then? Well, it’s at least Saxon as the name ‘Means’ demonstrates, and (working on the assumption that the photograph above does show a midden and not just the remains of some 20th century barbeque of Hambleton Hookings and KFC) presumably dates even further back to Romano British times. (The Romans introduced chickens into Britain and, to be honest, cockleshell middens are extremely rare.)
All of which is fascinating I’m sure you’d agree, but once again we’re short of space and we probably exhausted our readers’ attention span several minutes ago so, pending further investigations, it’s time we ended this particular article. For anybody who’s interested there’ll be more about the hall’s incredible history, not to mention our guided tour of the building, as soon as we’ve written about it.

The Legend of Kilgrimol: Part Two

The first part of this article can be found under the ‘Previous Articles’ menu in the right hand side bar...somewhere...

Now, if you’d been paying attention to Bulpit’s tale a few paragraphs back, you might have noticed the line: “…so he went to Cross Slack, where Grim’s oratory had stood.”
Cross Slack, nowadays, has long since vanished, the site being occupied by the original St. Anne’s golf course just south of Squires’ Gate. How do we know this? Well, in the reign of Edward the Third (otherwise known as the fourteenth century) Richard Fitz Roger granted the estate of Lytham to the monks of Durham, recording the boundaries of Kilgrimol in the process: “From the ditch on the western side of the cemetery of Kilgrimol, over which I have erected a cross, and from the same ditch and cross eastwards going along the Curridmere beyond the great moss…” and so on and so forth. If you’re in that frame of mind you can easily sit down and work out Cross Slack (and therefore Kilgrimol’s) location.
The ditch alluded to is where the ‘slack’ in Cross Slack actually gets its name, ‘slack’ being an old word referring to a long depression in the landscape; one generally filled with water. The cross, apparently, was erected by Richard Fitz Roger himself (he must have been very muscular) thus completing Kilgrimol’s new title.
The Kilgrimol keeill itself, it seems, had already been destroyed by the fourteenth century, only its cemetery being referred to in Richard Fitz Roger’s documents.
A quick glance at the 1840’s Ordnance Survey Map (overlaid, as always, courtesy of Mario Maps, on the modern day equivalent) pinpoints exactly where Cross Slack was located.

And, by way of confirmation that Cross Slack was the later name for Kilgrimol (we’re seldom satisfied with only one source of reference) we have the following, once again, from William Thornber: “During the Saxon era habitations of fishermen and others were erected on this line of coast, and Cross Slack was originally termed churchyard slack, from having been the site of a religious oratory and cemetery.”
Keeills, of course, were generally constructed close by but off the line of either Roman or Celtic roads. Yet again Thornber provides us with evidence for this: “Churchyard Slack lies situated in a hollow, having on the north a rising ground called Stony Hill, and at a distance of three quarters of a mile a similar elevation, though not so marked. On these ridges are found innumerable small boulders of grey granite, having apparently been acted upon by fire; but it is particularly remarkable that not one can be found amongst them fully whole. Similar stones in less quantity are discovered in the intervening space, and to some distance inland; yet on these mounds, and especially on the ground now occupied by T. Wilson esq. of Poulton, they are to be met with even in heaps, all more or less broken.”
Celtic roads, especially round the Fylde, were often constructed from fire-split stones, presumably the act of breaking them in half making for a flatter, more efficient surface.
So, now we know the age, the origin and the location of Kilgrimol, but we still don’t know exactly what became of it. What we do know, however, is that it vanished sometime before the fourteenth century, consistent with so many other keeills around the district.
In truth, despite folktales of biblical proportions, keeills were often adopted by Saxon monks and converted into Christian-exclusive churches, the Pagan element being eradicated (or, at least, attempts were made to wipe the Pagan elements out) in the process. Newer’s Wood in Pilling seems to have gone this way.
Other keeills developed under the Saxons’ and, later, the Normans’ influence into more substantial, but yet again exclusively Christian, churches, a great many of which are still standing today. St. Helen’s at Churchtown is a fine example of this.
Others still, as appears to be the case with Kilgrimol, just collapsed through lack of use. Coupled with the slow but steady rise of dunes in the area, the ancient church was no doubt eventually buried beneath the wind blown sand.
But that wasn’t quite the end of the matter otherwise we’d asking the owners of the golf course at this moment for permission to dig. (We wouldn’t be receiving any replies, of course, but that’s beside the point.) According to ‘Fylde Folk: Moss or Sand’ by Kathleen Eyre (1979) several pieces of ecclesiastic masonry were uncovered from the dunes by the local farmer at Granny’s Cottage, Cross Slack: “The stones with curious markings and inscriptions which had been turned up by Neddy from time to time near the cottage, had been so little thought of as to be tossed into the depths of a disused well and lost for ever.”

For ‘curious markings’ think keeill crosses, for ‘inscriptions’ think Ogham; ancient and important relics, no doubt, now lying at the bottom of a long lost well due to the ignorance of Old Ned.
The reality, perhaps, is even more tragic than the legend.

The Legend of Kilgrimol: Part One

Another two parter (well, we don’t want to bore our readers senseless all in one go).

Ask any resident of Lytham St. Anne’s about the ‘Legend of Kilgrimol’ (well, any resident who takes an interest in local folklore at any rate) and no doubt they’ll tell you of the lonely village that once stood amongst the sand dunes; a hamlet destroyed one night by such a violent storm that its ghostly inhabitants haunt the sea to this day, on moonless nights the doleful sound of the church’s bells still echoing hauntingly from beneath the waves.
Sounds like the plot for a cheap novel, doesn’t it? Hardly surprising really, as the tale, in one form or another, can be found throughout romantic literature (including Terry Pratchett), various locations along the British coast laying exclusive claim to its origin.
In Kilgrimol’s case, however, there might actually be a modicum of historical fact behind the story, if we peel back the layers and take a more scientific look.
For a start, the original legend didn’t actually involve a storm. We’re informed by William Thornber in his ‘History of Blackpool and its Neighbourhood’ that: “Tradition affirms, that an earthquake swallowed up the church of Kilgrimol.”
This too, however, seems highly unlikely, violent earthquakes not exactly being common around Lytham.
So where shall we start our investigation? Well how about a dissection of Kilgrimol’s name, originally recorded in monastic charters as ‘Kilgrimhow’?
The ‘kil’, as anybody who’s been following our previous articles will already know, refers to a ‘keeill’. (For those who haven’t, keeills were part Pagan/part Christian Celtic/Norse churches, named after the upturned boats (keels) from which they were constructed. They were run by missionaries known as culdees, more often than not the christianised descendants of druids. Saint Patrick was more than happy to meld Paganism with Christianity in this fashion as apparently the two religions had so much in common.)
The ‘Grim’ part of Kilgrimol is, quite simply, a personal name; and a Norse one at that, which is what you’d expect.
The ‘how’ is local dialect for ‘hough’, again a Norse word referring to a ‘burial mound’, which also makes perfect sense because keeills were, nine times out of ten, built on pagan burial sites.
So, in summary, Kilgrimol refers to the keeill belonging to a Norseman called Grim that stood on the site of an ancestral burial mound.
Once again, legend steps in to back up this claim. According to Reverend Bulpit’s ‘Notes on the Fylde’ (1879): “In the days before the missionaries came there were evil spirits in the water marshes around Marton Mere, who were propitiated by the Britons. When Grim, the priest from Kilgrimol, came teaching the people, he cast the chief spirit into the mere and it took the form of a great worm or conga eel.”
We’ve illustrated Marton Mere below for no other reason than we’re a bit short on photographs this week.

There are some obvious metaphors to be drawn from this folktale, no doubt concocted during the mediaeval period by the more fundamentalist Saxon and Norman Christians. The evil spirits represent paganism, being banished into the water by the introduction of Grim and his Christianity. Being a Culdee, however, he didn’t quite complete the job, the legend continuing: “In the bad days of the Danes the eel was loose and came out to the dwellings of those who took refuge on the shore, and ate sheep and even children. Their priest could not lay the spirit, and so he went to Cross Slack, where Grim’s oratory had stood, and hoped Grim would aid him by a vision. Lying there in the darkness, Grim’s little bell rang for Prime, and then a voice told the priest to make an oatmeal cake marked with a cross, but the cross was to be covered with a freshly cooked scallop of bacon. The eel, in his nocturnal visit, smelled the dainty bait and bolted the morsel. The cross cake stuck in his throat and caused agonies of suffocation. He could not leave the mere, and even yet, on a moonlit night, a swell on the water marks where he rolls in agony.”
And so we see the beginnings of the modern legend. Just to clarify the unsubtle meaning behind this folktale, however, for the Danes read the ‘Norse’ and their semi-Christian, semi-Pagan beliefs. For the ‘oatmeal cake’ (common fodder around the Fylde) read the mediaeval peasant equivalent of the modern day communion wafer. For the total banishment of the serpent, read the Saxon Christian doctrine triumphing once and for all over the Pagan religion, Grim himself being dragged back into the story, in spirit at least, to give the act his blessing for those too old and stubborn to renounce the ancient Celtic/Norse lore.
Which, we’re sure you’ll agree, is all very interesting, but it doesn’t exactly bring us any closer to what actually happened to Kilgrimol. For that we need to know where the hamlet (and it’s chapel) originally stood.

Only, because we’ve run out of space, that’ll have to wait until week now.