The Celtic Coastal Road: Part One

In previous articles at the Fylde and Wyre Antiquarian, we’ve discussed…or rather ‘suggested and provided evidence for’ (because, to be honest, hardly anybody actually ‘discusses’ these matters)…Celtic roads at Robins Lane, Bispham and Higher Moor Farm, Warbreck.
So now it’s time to track down and analyse another potential Celtic highway, this time running from Waterloo Road in the south to the Gynn in the north, following the high ground along the edge of the cliffs…more or less, but not mimicking the Roman coastal route as described in another previous article.
And if that doesn’t sound complicated enough, just to be doubly awkward, we’re going to start slap bang in the middle of this road, with the following quote from Thornber: “A lane usually called Double Dyke at this time ran across the high road from Bank Hey, now Green Walk, through the ground occupied by Mr. Topping’s house to the back of Dobson’s buildings.”

Just to bring Thornber’s description up to date a bit, Mr. Topping’s house, as far as we can determine from the 1866 Blackpool Directory, stood on Clifton Drive.

Bank Hey itself, not to be confused with the modern day Bank Hey Street, was actually the estate belonging to William Cocker who later built the Winter Gardens. In fact, Bank Hey House was actually incorporated into the building on Coronation Street beneath which Double Dyke ran, or to put it another way, the bit of the Winter Gardens shown in the photograph below.

Backing that claim up, the large-scale Ordnance Survey maps dating to before the Winter Gardens’ construction shows this, now long since vanished but once ancient, stretch of road running more or less north – south, from Adelaide Street to Carter Street.
The name ‘Double Dyke’ is the main clue to its antiquity here, suggesting that this was a hollow way measuring twice the width of a normal dyke system.
Right… now let’s head south, tracing ‘Double Dyke’ to Central Drive on old Ordnance Survey maps by following various field boundaries, double hedge lines (between which an ancient road obviously once ran) and other anomalies associated with antiquated and no-longer-used road systems. (If you’re feeling bored this weekend you could give this a try at home. Just find yourself a large scale O.S. map from the 19th century, stick your tongue out of the corner of your mouth for added concentration, and deploy your index finger in ‘search mode’.)
Eventually we hit Revoe and, in particular, the rear of the gasworks where, unsurprisingly perhaps, a stone hammer was discovered in 1881, confirming that we’re on the right route. Unfortunately we don’t have a photograph of the stone hammer because…well…true to form nobody knows where it is any more.
Nonetheless, there’s also a ‘ruin’ recorded at the junction of Kent Road and Princess Street on those same early Ordnance Survey maps and, over the years, there have been a number of suggestions put forward by local historians as to what it might have been. These range from an ancient farmhouse to a monastic site although it should be noted that, at the rear of Hambleton, a similar ‘ruin’ recorded by Ordnance Survey turned out to be the cobbled remains of another Iron Age road, so, in our opinion, it’s open for suggestions.
So far so good…but because we know how incredibly difficult it is to work out directions in your head, we’ve produced the map below detailing…well…more like simplifying…the route that we’ve speculated so far.

At which point it’s time for a seven-day break. (We read somewhere recently that after several paragraphs people stop reading blogs and their brains go into melt down…and we wouldn’t want this to happen to our reader. Besides, it means we can take the week off and concentrate on something other than this website for a change.)