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.