Chipping away at History

“The village of Chipping is an obscure and uninteresting place, on the west bank of a rivulet, which divides it from the estate of Leagram Hall, at the foot of the lofty and black elevation of Parlike Pike.”

Baines’ ‘History of Lancashire’

The residents of Chipping might well deservedly take offence at the ‘uninteresting’ adjective ascribed to their picturesque and history-bloated village there. Chipping’s actually a fascinating place. So much so, in fact, there’s a house for sale in the middle of it that we wouldn’t mind owning ourselves. (Of course we’d have to sell a lot more books first, several million of them probably, but what the heck, we’re allowed to dream aren’t we?)
Here’s a photograph of our (potential) future cottage for you:


We like Chipping a lot, and Baines committed a massive injustice with his somewhat too succinct appraisal of the place.
There’s history aplenty in this tiny corner of the Wyre, as John Weld (Chipping’s most prominent Victorian antiquarian) discovered when he wrote his book ‘Weapons and Implements. Prehistoric and Ancient Races. Volume Two’. Unfortunately, to the best of our knowledge, it was never published (possibly because of it’s rather unappealing title – something like ‘Death and Slaughter in the Fylde’ might have worked better for the publishers), but we were lucky enough to be shown the original when we visited the Harris Museum a couple of years ago. (And before anyone runs off to complain about us illegally tramping through the vaults of the Harris Museum, we were invited -- officially and legally -- so stick that in your pipe and smoke it.)
There’s reckoned to be barrows, ancient and mysterious, in the fields behind St Bartholomew’s according to John Dixon and Jaana Jarvinen’s ‘Historic Walks Around Bleasdale’. Or, at any rate, you have to ‘…follow the hollow-way on, passing mounds, to go over the stile in the fence.’ So we’re assuming they’re barrows of some description. Whatever the case, we couldn’t see them from the churchyard anyway, as the photograph below demonstrates.


And there’s a yew tree, old and massive, said to have been standing (with a little help from some much needed supports in recent times) for at least seven centuries. Baines might not have found that interesting, but we did. That’s why we took a photograph of it.


It’s an ugly old sod, but so would you be if you’d been lurking there, come rain, snow or shine, since the early mediaeval period with only the occasional courting couple or the odd stray dog emptying its bladder against you for company.
There are lots of ghosts in Chipping, too. One of our favourite stories concerns a barmaid from the Sun Inn. Her name was Lizzy Dean. One morning Our Lizzy looked out of her window at the sound of the church bells pealing, only to discover her fiancé emerging from St Bartholomew’s porch married to another girl. In her anguish she hanged herself, requesting in her suicide note that she be buried beneath the church path, so that her ex-fiancé would be forced to walk over her corpse every Sunday. (There’s nothing like a woman scorned, eh?) The vicar, apparently, thought better of her suggestion, and had her interred in one corner of the graveyard instead…which, to be honest, casts some suspicions over the authenticity of this tale. Suicide was considered an unholy act by the church and people who took their own lives were generally laid to rest – or ‘unrest’ as the case might be – in unconsecrated ground. But this is a ghost story, so we won’t let minor quibbles get in the way of telling it.
Because her last request was never granted, her spirit still haunts the Sun Inn to this day…allegedly.
Want to see a photograph of the melancholy spot? We thought you might, which was why we took one.


There it is, as seen from the church steps where Lizzy first saw her bridegroom metamorphose into a sod. If you look closely enough, you might just be able to see a pale, female face at the window.
That’d be Michelle consuming her second pint and a meat and tatty pie.
Enough! No doubt we’ll have more to tell you about Chipping at some point, but for now it’s time for breakfast.