A Quartet of Old Lytham Photographs (or, as the case might be, three old photographs and one greyscale painting)

Please Note: The numerous projects with which we're involved (sleeping, drinking, and eating being some of the top priorities) have, once again, got the better of me so, for the time being at any rate, this board is taking another breather. No doubt we'll be back again before too long. In the meantime the forum's still open for business and Wyre Archaeology's relentless destruction of Lancashire's green and pleasant fields continues apace. Here's the last posting for now, but keep dropping back every so often won't you, because I'm sure we'll return eventually.

Let’s stick with facts this week and keep the speculations/pointless asides under wraps. People have been complaining, apparently, that I take our local history far too flippantly. Oddly enough, these complaints don’t appear to have originated from anybody who’s tracked down an Iron Age settlement or Roman road recently, but who’s checking? History belongs to everyone, I suppose, even those who consider it to be a matter of life and death, so, tongue out of cheek again sharpish; here’s the serious version of events.
This is Lytham Hall. (Was that formal enough, do you reckon?)

Work began on the building in 1751 from the designs of ‘Carr of York’, and was completed in 1764. The Manor of Lytham itself was originally held by Earl Tostig (King Harold’s rebellious brother killed at the battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066) before being granted by the Lord of Woodplumpton (Richard Fitz Roger) to the Monastery of Durham in 1190. (Is everyone following this closely? There might be questions at the end. Probably not…but you never know.)
The site of the hall became the monks’ priory, but was abandoned before the dissolution reached town, the prior renting the manor off in 1539 to somebody called Thomas Dannett (I don’t know who he was…go and check out the genealogical sites if you’re that interested) on an eighty-year lease.
In 1554, well before the lease had actually expired, Thomas Holcroft (whoever he was as well) bought the manor from the crown.
Green Drive Lodge, shown below (er…obviously) was one of the two gatehouses to Lytham Hall.

The Clifton family (of Lytham Hall…or did I mention that?) also owned nearby Witch Wood on the edge of the estate. The wood, unfortunately, wasn’t frequented by mysterious brunette maidens without their cuddies on (Steady…you’re degenerating into flippancy again! Ed) but was actually named after one of the family’s favourite horses. The Witch’s burial place is marked by a gravestone, and has spooked many an unwitting rambler.
Onwards, to the launch of Lytham lifeboat.


In 1839 John Rye, following the loss of several fishing vessels in Clovelly, founded the Shipwrecked Mariners Society. From 1851 the society operated lifeboats at Lytham, Portmadoc, Hornsea, Tenby, Llanelly, Teignmouth, Rhyl and Newhaven but eventually became two separate organizations, one concentrating on rescuing lives while the other helped bereaved families.
In 1854 the Society transferred its lifeboats to the R.N.L.I.
And finally for this week, the all important (and extremely serious) donkey rides on Lytham Beach.


According to John Porter’s ‘History of the Fylde’ (published in 1876) during the nineteenth century slightly more upmarket races, involving the pick of the local farmers’ horses, were held on the Green every Whit Monday.
The races took place on the sward between the windmill and an old limekiln approximately one mile north towards the hamlet of Saltcotes. Porter records that: “These races, which are described as having being very fair contests, were kept up for many years. The prizes competed for were saddles, bridles, whips etc.”
There…honour satisfied -- an entire article without one flippant remark. Hopefully that should keep those dour antiquarians with nothing better to complain about quiet for a few days at least.

In for a Barracking

We didn’t know about this until Steve Bird pointed it out to us. We’ve written before about Wilfred Owen and the hutments at Rossall Point – about how in 1859 Fleetwood became an army town and how the squaddies were accused of trampling down fences and destroying farm property. What we didn’t realise was that part of the original barracks is still standing.
Take a look at this:


This is one of two remaining walls belonging to the aforementioned barracks down a back alley running parallel to Beach Road. It might not be very attractive, perhaps, but it is historically interesting, especially when you stop to consider that at the start of the First World War it was actually occupied by this lot:


We were quite impressed by the size of the wall. The barracks never looked that large on the map. Whether Wilfred Owen ever wandered around inside the enclosure or not, we couldn’t say for certain (we suspect he did) because he lived officially down Bold Street (and for a short time on Lord Street as well).
Whatever the case, here’s the first edition Ordnance Survey map showing exactly how large (and complicated) the barracks were.


Here’s another shot of the wall.


High, isn’t it? And heavily defended! Those are gun slots up near the top. They get narrower towards the outside, allowing maximum room for manoeuvre by the riflemen behind them (who, presumably, had some sort of gantry to stand on…unless they were just extremely tall) and minimum chance for any stray enemy bullets to get through.
Oddly enough, the walls appear to have been built, or rather rebuilt, several times. The lower bricks are mainly pre-frogged affairs placing them, if memory serves, in the early Victorian period. Higher up there are your traditional frogged and hard-baked Victorian bricks, whilst at the top a layer consistent with World War II defences seems to have been added. We’re not sure about the entire life history of the barracks, when it demolished and why etc. so we’re just going off what we could actually see.
Round the corner on Beach Road there’s another relic from Fleetwood’s military past, denoting the corner of the barracks themselves.


That’s a War Department stone, that is. There’s another one in the front wall of the North Euston Hotel if anyone fancies a look. You might be able to make out W.D. No. 2 carved into this one, and what appears to be a benchmark. It isn’t a benchmark. It’s the War Department logo. It looks like a benchmark because, well, benchmarks were established by the Ordnance Survey mob, who basically worked for the War Department surveying Britain’s ordnance…er…obviously.
Anyhow, there you go…worth a quick gander if you’re into that sort of stuff.
One last photograph, showing another section of the remaining walls, this time over a hollow section of ground where the foundations to keep it level, as can be seen, were rather large. It’s surprising what’s still left around Fleetwood that we thought had long since gone.

The Return of the Samuel Fletcher

It’s time for an update concerning one of our previous stories, and for once it isn’t bad news. This makes a pleasant change in the world of Fylde and Wyre antiquarianism, it must be said; most of our news items unfortunately containing such words as ‘redevelopment’, ‘destruction’, and/or ‘sadly passed away’.
Remember way back on the dumpty-umptyeth of whatever (don’t ask me – I can’t remember dates…it was last year sometime whatever the case), when we went to visit Shirley Matthews (granddaughter of the famous Allen Clarke) at Little Marton Mill, followed by an enjoyable afternoon spent in the company of Ann and Bruce Allen?
No, I didn’t think you would.
Well, that’s what we did regardless, and Bruce (a former shipwright from Newcastle) explained to us his problems with the Samuel Fletcher, Blackpool’s historic oar-propelled lifeboat, which, at the time, was in considerable disrepair, having been turfed out of its shed at Stanley Park for reasons of…well…redevelopment as it happens.
Back then Bruce was searching for a place to keep said lifeboat free from vandals, idiots and redevelopers, where he could work on the rotting hull and bring the boat back to its former glory.
That was then.
As you’ve probably gathered, the problem with relocating the Samuel Fletcher has now been solved, as the following cutting from the Evening Gazette testifies. (If you’re having difficulty reading the print at this size, as always, just click on the image for a larger version):


Yes, you’re right, we have been a long time about posting this. To be honest we didn’t buy this specific edition of the Gazette and had to wait for a couple of months before we found somebody who still had a copy to lend us. (Fortunately my mum keeps hold of this sort of thing, because she knows what I’m like.)
Anyhow, that’s not quite the end of the tale.
Shortly afterwards our old friend Phil Barker (of Barkers Butchers – excellent sausages and beef pies available -- and Rossall Beach Co. dot UK fame) managed to get his hands on a signed, first-edition copy of Allen Clarke’s ‘The Story of the Blackpool Lifeboat’, which, amongst other stuff, includes photographs and information about the Samuel Fletcher…naturally.
Phil, because he’s that sort of bloke, decided to have the book reprinted (with Shirley Matthew’s permission, of course) – not for business or profit, you understand, but simply to ensure that the late Allen Clarke’s work was firmly back in the public domain.
The photograph below shows a certain handsome, young antiquarian (watch it) holding his own, personal copy of the aforementioned book (cheers Phil):


Look, no insulting comments, okay? Everybody needs to dream a bit (and let’s face it, nobody else is going to ‘Big’ me up), so if you feel inclined to make personal remarks about my hair/nose/whatever then I’ll be forced to change the photograph for one of Phil Harding in his shorts. And before you say, “That’d be an improvement”…believe me, it wouldn’t!
Anyhow, copies of ‘The Story of Blackpool Lifeboat’ are now available. I’m not sure where exactly, but if you drop by Barkers Butchers on Green Drive in Rossall to make enquiries, no doubt they’ll supply you with one.
And buy a couple of sausage rolls while you’re there, because they’re excellent.

Off to the Gillows

When it comes to manufacturers of quality furniture there are few names to rival that of Gillow and Co. of Lancaster, and, no doubt, our reader will have heard of them already -- especially if they watch the Antiques’ Roadshow, because various examples of Gillows’ work crop up from time to time on it, usually at extremely high prices.
“What’s this got to do with the Fylde and Wyre Antiquarian?” you might be asking. “After all, you said it yourself – Gillows of Lancaster, the clue’s in the name there. Lancaster might be just up the road from the Wyre, admittedly, but, strictly speaking, it’s still not part of it.”
All right, keep your hair on baldy! I’m just getting to that. You see, what a lot of people don’t realise is that Robert Gillow (born 1704, died 1772, founder of Gillow and Co. of Lancaster) was actually a Singleton lad.
He didn’t hang around for long, ‘emigrating’ to Lancaster in 1720 to begin his apprenticeship as a joiner. Nonetheless, he was Singleton born, and that’s good enough for me. So stop being pedantic and grow up.
Let’s have a look at one of his pieces, shall we? This is a mahogany bookcase (or, at any rate, a drawing of mahogany bookcase, because we weren’t sure how the copyright stood) originally belonging to Mrs Hutton Rawlinson who purchased it from Gillows of Lancaster on the eighteenth of June 1772.


So, what do we know about Robert Gillow’s early years, as a fully-fledged Fylde-born-un? Well, his father, allegedly, played a part in the Jacobite rebellion and was, by way of consequence, locked up in Lancaster Castle, where Robert joined him so as to be close at hand if necessity called. (He didn’t join him in the castle, obviously, just in Lancaster in general.)
Right, I’m quoting from some website or other here – possibly Wikipedia, I’m not sure, I should have taken better notes: “…Robert Gillow's education in carpentry began during his time as a ship's carpenter. He is also credited with having travelled to the West Indies and brought back one of the first recorded shipments of mahogany into England.”
Fancy a drawing of some chairs, the finely carved details of which, like the bookcase, have been lost due to the fact that I couldn’t be bothered spending time drawing them up properly?


Gillow’s first venture into business was in 1727, when he went into partnership with a fellow apprentice called George Haresnape. The business didn’t last long. Three years after it had been set up, it was closed again, Haresnape finding more suitable employment in Liverpool as a slave trader.
Undaunted, Gillow opened his own cabinet making firm close to the Judges’ Lodgings on Castle Hill. The building’s still there, as the illustration of the entrance below sort of testifies:


In brief then, otherwise we’ll be here all day, when Robert Gillow died in 1772, his sons Richard and Robert (he might have been good with mahogany, but he was lousy at inventive names) continued the business, the latter running Gillows’ London branch on Oxford Street.
By this point Richard had also apparently trained up an architect, who designed several notable Lancastrian building, including the Customs House on St George's Quay. In turn, when Richard shuffled off this mortal coil in 1811, his son, also Richard (still not terribly inventive with those names there) took over the business.
Gillows continued to grow, specializing in outfitting liners such as the Lusitania. Good old Queen Vicky also commissioned a few bespoke pieces and during World War I, they made munitions boxes from aeroplane wings and propellers.
Gillow and Co are credited with inventing the Davenport (for Captain Davenport no less), the billiard table (not, as far as we can tell, for Captain Billiard) and the expandable dining table.
Early pieces of work are stamped with the words: ‘Gillows Lancaster’ or ‘Gillow Lancaster’, and later pieces are stamped with ‘Gillow and Co’ or just the plain old, vanilla-flavoured ‘Gillows’
In 1903 the business was finally merged with S.J. Waring, and eventually taken over and closed in 1961.
During its time, however, Gillow and Co. was famous enough to appear in works by Thackery, one of Gilbert and Sullivan’s operettas, and some novel or other by Jane Austin.
There’s even a pub named after the original Robert, so we’ll end with an illustration of said building and a pint of Speckled Hen raised in his honour:

Taking Stock

Take a look at the photograph below and see if you can tell what it is (and if anybody says, it’s my kitchen door, they’ll be banned from this board for life…or until the X Factor’s removed from our television screens, whichever is longer):



Want a clue? Well, it’s the wrong way up for a start. It would more normally have been seen lying lengthways rather than upright.
Still none the wiser? I can only assume you wouldn’t make much of a detective then, seeing as the following photograph (which has been in view all the time) is a dead giveaway:


Yes, it’s a set of stocks – or to be more precise, Poulton Stocks. That’s probably the chairman of Wyre Archaeology’s grandfather incarcerated in them. Come to think of it, it might even be the chairman of Wyre Archaeology himself.
“So what are you doing with the wooden section of Poulton stocks in your back garden?” I hear you ask. (I heard somebody ask it anyway. Too many long nights with only the cats for company has that effect on me.)
To be honest, Paul Bradshaw -- remember him? He’s the bloke from Bodkin Hall whose front drive we completely obliterated a couple of years back -- was having a clear out of his workshop. “Everything must go!” the council told him. So, go it did…into the back of a van and straight round to my place, which was very good of him I thought.
Exactly how long the stocks had been in his workshop it’s hard to say, so we did a bit of investigating.
Poulton stocks, apparently, were constructed in 1351. Don’t ask me where we got that particular year from, because I can’t remember now, but we got it from somewhere, so it must be right.
The two large oak leg fastener bits (one considerably more knackered than the other, it should be said) in our back garden aren’t that old of course. No, according to John Porter’s History of the Fylde published in 1876: “…the wooden portion has been recently renewed” so, we weren’t entirely certain whether these were the ones that were replaced, or the ones that replaced the ones that were replaced because the stocks in Poulton now appear to be relatively modern.
They’re certainly the ones that appear in the photograph above, right down to the holes where the chains were originally attached. Unfortunately, because the photograph’s Victorian, and because 1876 falls smack bang in the middle of Victoria’s reign, the photograph could have been taken either side of the date of ‘replacement’.
So we found another photograph – the one below to be more exact:


Once again, they appear to be the same set of wooden leggy bits that we’ve got at home. However, we’ve no idea when this photograph was taken either.
Given that there appears to be some sort of motoring sign in the background, though, we can safely assume that it was taken sometime after 1876.
Therefore, by a process of logical deduction, the stocks in our kitchen are the replacement Victorian ones.
Still, they’re an intriguing bit of history, and not one you find every day scaring the cat when it’s trying to eat.
Hopefully, by the time this hits the Internet we’ll have dropped them off at the Fylde Country Life Museum where they’re going to form part of the Wyre Archaeology display. Unless nobody can give us a lift, of course, because they are a bit too big to fit in my rucksack, in which case they’ll still be leaning against our bookcase trying their best to look nonchalant.

Identifying Architecture in the Fylde and Wyre: Doorways and Doorsteps

When you’re archaeologing, uprooting rubble and masonry from some bovine-occupied meadow, it generally pays, from a dating perspective at least, to know something of past architectural styles. With this in mind we’re going to introduce our reader to a few examples of local design, kicking off with the drawing below showing the side door to the Bank of Scotland, London Street, Fleetwood:


Don’t let anybody tell you that Fleetwood’s architecture consists solely of Victorian vernacular fishermens' cottages. This monstrous tomb of a doorway (the perfect accompaniment to the over-the-top building surrounding it) is what’s known as baroque.
Baroque is similar in many respects to neo-classicism, all pillars and capitals and ancient Grecian and Roman forms and stuff, only with an excess of ornamentation that generates its own distinctive in-your-face style designed to add grandiosity to the already pompous – pretty much what you’d expect from a typical bank stamping its authoritarian presence on the humble fishermen of our little harbour town really.
Oddly enough there aren’t too many examples of Baroque in Britain. This ornate style of architecture was actually Europe’s response to the puritanical whitewashing of ornamentation during the Protestant reformation. The Jesuits on the continent in particular commissioned churches of an extravagantly flamboyant nature, whilst in Britain the protestant return to simpler, unadorned styles as advocated (whether you liked it or not) by Oliver Cromwell and others of his ilk, put the mockers on its introduction for a very long time.
The Baroque style was brought to Blighty by Thomas Archer, who travelled extensively around Europe in the 18th century picking up ideas and, basically, nicking them.
Now, a few moments ago we mentioned Neo-Classicism. What’s Neo-classicism, you ask? (Or perhaps you don’t.)
Fair enough, next illustration:


As you’ve probably gathered, that’s the front door to the Royal Oak Pub, Lord Street, Fleetwood. Note the faux columns on either side, the Neo-classical Georgian fanlight, the old fashioned quoins (they’re the big blocks at the edge of the walls), the ionic capitals and the triangular top to the doorway reminiscent of ancient Greek temples.
Neo classicism means simply New Classical, or to put it another way, a modern interpretation of ancient architecture. Inigo Jones (no relation to Indiana) in 1613 took one of the first of the now-famous ‘Grand Tour’s (you’ve seen enough programmes about that particular subject by now not for me to rehash it, I’m sure) and discovered four works entitled collectively ‘Quattro Libri Dell Architettura’ by Andrea Palladio. These volumes were a treatise on proportion in architecture based on the principals laid down by Vitruvius in the first century B.C. and became the basis for neo-classicism.
Did anybody understand that? Neither did I to be honest, and I wrote it. Let’s just say that it’s all based on ancient classical architecture (with a few nominal alterations to make it contemporary) and gave rise to Greek revival, Gothic revival and Romanticism, and leave it at that. (Although, the door to the Royal Oak is hardly a fine example of Neo-classicism so it was probably a bad idea to include it really, but I’d already drawn it up, so it’s going to stay for now.)
Let’s have one last door-related Fleetwood illustration for the time being then.
This is the doorstep to the jewellers on Lord Street:


As you can probably see, it’s a mosaic, stemming from the Arts and Crafts Movement…er…school. The Arts and Crafts movement was basically an attempt to return to a more natural human design, away from the industrialisation of the Victorian period. (Think hippies only with a bit more talent.) Ideally the work would be created entirely by human hands without the help or intervention of any mechanical aid etc.
It also tended to involve lots of swirly stems and leaves and stuff (although the leaf in the middle of our drawing was a genuine one that had blown off one of the trees on Lord Street and I couldn’t be bothered moving it out of the way.)
Enough. I can feel a headache coming on and it isn’t even mine.

Doors And Windows in our Fisherman’s Cottage

It’s time to revisit our fisherman’s cottage in Fleetwood, on this occasion to check out the bedroom door and window.
Let’s just wait for the thunderous retreat of most of our readers to die away before continuing, shall we?
All done? Excellent. Time to crack on.
This is a photograph of our bedroom door, taken in extremely low light with an extremely naff camera. (It’s quite possibly the worst photograph we’ve ever posted on this board, in fact, even if I am wearing an expensive genuine yak wool cardigan.) Michelle thought the bedroom door might be boring on its own, so she asked me to add a bit of interest by standing in front of it.


And with that the rest of our readers take to the hills looking decidedly nauseous.
Over the years our Victorian cottage has undergone some extensive renovations, not least of which was the removal of the stairs from the kitchen, their replacements running up from the living room, and the creation of a small landing in the process.
Originally there wouldn’t have been a bathroom. A cast iron tub in front of the range, a kettle full of hot water, a block of carbolic soap and the sort of scrubbing brush that’d give its owner an unhealthy red glow, was all that was required back then. With the advent of indoor plumbing, however, it became customary to convert the small bedrooms at the rear of such cottages into bathrooms/bogs.
Exactly where our bathroom and bedroom doors came from it’s difficult to say, (they’re both the same incidentally…‘buggered’, I believe the technical term is) but they’re Georgian in style. That’s not to say they’re Georgian in age. The Victorians made doors to the same design, and considering that when the cottage was converted there’d have been a couple of doors left over, no doubt they were reused with the customary cheapness associated with your average Fleetwood property developer.
The doors themselves consist of four interior panels each set into a mortise and tenor framework with a large wooden separation between the upper half and the lower half, the lower panels being of a smaller stature than their counterparts above.
See…typical Georgian design. (Is there anybody still reading this?)
To be honest, as already hinted at, both our bathroom door and our bedroom door are totally knackered. I gave them a coat of paint recently and almost instantly regretted it. Not only are there numerous filled in divots and holes where various handles and hinges have been attached, unattached, reattached and, finally, wrenched off with a crowbar and thrown in the bin, over the years, but the panels are outlined by a series of holes where tacks were once hammered.
We read somewhere recently about Georgian doors in manor houses separating the servants’ quarters from the gentry’s. These doors had covers panel-pinned onto them to make them blend into the wall. Aristocrats wanted to disassociate themselves with the staff, and a hidden portal to the realms of said unwashed urchins seemed a suitable arrangement by which to keep the psychological horror of such people at bay.
So did our doors originate in some splendid Georgian manor then?
No, probably not. During the latter part of the twentieth century panelled doors became unfashionable. Regarded as tired, dated and drab they were covered by sheets of hardboard, which after a few decades became tired, dated and drab themselves. So the tacky faux-wooden sheets were wrenched off again, leaving a series of little holes around the outside of the door.
Still, they might be tatty, but at least they’re original features.
Enough about the door. Let’s move on to the bedroom window.


(Sounds of the last reader of all waking up from his forty winks with a splutter and quietly shuffling off to put the kettle on.)
What’s probably not immediately apparent in the photograph above (because, let’s face it, it’s almost as naff as the other one) are the textured Art Deco panes that make up the window. Our living room window’s the same. Worth a fortune! Well…no, not really, although they’d cost a fortune to double glaze so they’re staying like they are for time being.
Art Deco originated in France around 1900 with a gang of artistic types known as ‘La Société des Artistes Décorateurs’ (otherwise translated as ‘The Society of the Artistic Decorators’). In 1925 the ‘Société’ organized the ‘Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes’ from which the name Art Deco derived.
The style was influenced by Cubism, Constructivism, Futurism, Neoclassicism and Art Nouveau, although when the fashion caught on in Britain it developed its own vernacular brand of...well…Britishness.
It wasn’t particularly long lived however, and by the 1940s windows such as ours were either being chiselled out and replaced with something altogether more modern by fashion-conscious house owners, or blown out at random into the streets by inconsiderate Nazi bombing raids.
Some of our readers -- what am I talking about? There can’t be anybody left reading this by now. On the chance that there is however, just bear with me – some of our readers will have realised by now that, what with our cottage being of Victorian construction, and what with Queen Victoria kicking the bucket in 1901, it’s highly unlikely that our own Art Deco windows were originally supplied with the house.
It doesn’t matter. We’re fond of them.

Harris and Hughes Guided Cottage Tours for the Terminally Bored. Book now for your own five-minute visit to our fisherman’s cottage (bathroom admission charged separately) followed by coffee and hobnobs on the front doorstep and a quick stroke of the cat’s head. Only £45.99 (not including V.A.T.)

The Mystery of Norbreck Mill

It’s reasonably safe to assume that our reader (singular) never realised that Norbreck had a windmill.
Well it did. After all, Norbreck is a part of the Fylde and therefore, it stands to reason, that it has its own mill.
Or rather, ‘had’ its own mill -- past tense.
It doesn’t nowadays, of course, but reference to it can be found in Alan Stott’s excellent ‘History of Norbreck and Little Bispham’, which informs us that: “John Allen in 1538 took a seventy year lease on more abbey lands, which included the windmill at Norbreck.”
Unfortunately that’s the mill’s only mention in legal documents for more than a century afterwards.
When it finally does reappear in an exchequer deposition of 1657 relating to the Fleetwood family, it was claimed to have been built only sixteen years previously, which raises the question as to whether or not it was the same mill. Let’s assume that it was for now, and that Edmund Fleetwood (mentioned as the previous owner in the deposition) ‘rebuilt’ it circa 1641.
By the time of the deposition itself (1657 in case you’d forgotten) Edmund Fleetwood was long since dead and the mill had passed into the ownership of his widow, Everill Heber.
Why do we mention all this when we’re usually the sort of people to steer as clear of genealogical lists as we would of Channel Five American made-for-television-movies? Because we’re trying to work out where the mill was located, that’s why, and, unfortunately, we’ll need this sort of information to accomplish the task.
Bear with us.
Suggestion has been made that the mill originally stood at the southern end of Norbreck Road, which back in those days probably ran a few hundreds yards further to the west than it does today (i.e. out over the beach where, four hundred years ago, the cliff tops would have reached.)
Let’s have a photograph of said location (albeit off the edge of the cliffs in the foreground, and suspended in mid-air as the temporal crow flies):


It’s a reasonable theory under the circumstances, but we’d like put forward an alternative. (Well, we have to be different just for the sake of it.)
Unfortunately Norbreck Mill wasn’t the only thing that passed into Everill Herber’s hands. Six hundred quid’s worth of debt was passed along with it, so, along with other sections of the Rossall Estate, the mill was sold off (in true Fylde coast nepotistic fashion) and ended up in the ownership of Reginald Heber.
None of which, worse luck, brings us any closer to discovering the mill’s whereabouts. However, one helpful clue appears in Norman Cunliffe’s ‘A journey through Bispham, Norbreck and Little Bispham’: “The Norbreck Mill has been described as being situated on a mound whilst elsewhere there is another reference to Norbreck Mill Hill.”
'Situated on a mound’ suggests a peg mill.
For those not fully conversant with ancient windmills, peg mills were generally wooden affairs based on an early mediaeval Dutch design, the entire building being pivoted on a central post, or ‘peg’, around which it could revolve in order to face the wind. These mounds, circular embankments around the base of the mill, generally housed the mill’s machinery.
Norbreck Mill Hill, of course, suggests a hilltop.
Right, back to our history lesson.
Reginald Heber, as mentioned above, put his manservant (watch it), Robert Gaulter (a sixty year old Norbreckonian husbandman) in charge of said mill. Robert Gaulter died in 1672, leaving the mill in the capable hands of his son Richard who, unfortunately, also shuffled off this mortal coil one year later in 1673. Another year later still and Norbreck Mill found its way into the possession of Robert Brodbelt, or rather was in the process of finding its way out of Robert Brodbelt’s possession, because that was the year he kicked the bucket. The mill now, along with ‘Haybers Tenements’, was bequeathed to Robert Brodbelt’s son-in-law Richard Smithson.
Pay close attention to the ‘Haybers Tenements’ bit. Haybers Tenements were obviously named after the previously mentioned Everill Herber/Reginald Heber etc. In the Victorian period, the area of the cliffs between Bispham tram station and Norbreck Castle was known as ‘Eagburg’ (as mentioned by William Thornber, the Victorian antiquarian). The same stretch was also mentioned in the Blackburn Mail of 1795 as ‘the cliffs of Egbert’.
Was this a corruption of the Haybers Tenements?
It might have been.
It’s a bit tenuous, perhaps, but who can say?
Regardless of this, somewhere around the same time the mill finally seems to have run out of wind and given up the ghost. Of the two known millers in the Norbreck area in the 17th century (John Anyon of Great Bispham who died in 1681 and William Brodbelt) neither appeared to be connected to Norbreck Mill (or were even working as millers) in 1676, the time of the census, suggesting that the mill was well and truly out of business by this point.
By the middle of the eighteenth century, Alexander Singleton (somewhat confusingly of Poulton) inherited most of the former Brodbelt estate, which included the windmill site, from his brother Edmund Singleton. Haybers Fields were described in deeds pertaining to the Brodbelt estate as being situated in the southwest of Norbreck.
Right, that’s the important bit. You almost missed it, didn’t you? (I can’t say as I blame you. Even I’m having difficulty staying awake.)
The southwest of Norbreck! That’s the end of Norbreck Road, next to the castle, right?
Well, no…that’s wrong actually. That’s the extent of Norbreck nowadays, but originally the southwest corner of Norbreck was designated as Hesketh Avenue, a boundary that, despite being well and truly planted in Bispham today, was agreed upon by the Ordnance Survey back in Victorian times.
Let’s have a Victorian photograph of Hesketh Avenue then, just to get our bearings. (I know Hesketh Avenue well, having lived there many years ago, although I probably knew the Highlands pub better.)

Just to add to the confirmation of Norbreck’s extent back in those days, Alexander’s son Edmund inherited the estate in 1768 and bought up the rest of the Brodbelt lands, including Cradley Slack Farm (now opposite Sainsbury’s on the other side of Red Bank Road) and a field called Whinny at the end of Beaufort Avenue, all described as being at the southern end of Norbreck.

A quick photograph of Beaufort Avenue for you, and then we’ll move on:

So, now that we’ve established that the southern extremity of the Brodbelt Estate was Redbank Road, this suggests that Norbreck Mill originally stood on the cliffs, where the Haybers Tenements had originally stood, somewhere close to where the Bispham Tram shelter now stands. As far as we know Bispham never actually had its own mill, probably because this particular location was ideally situated to serve both communities.
Mystery solved (in our opinion at least).
Of course, if anybody out there believes they know different...

Some old Photographs of Bispham Cliffs

We’ve been colouring in some old photographs again, this time, as the title suggests, of Bispham cliffs, in order to highlight the ridiculous dangers that early travellers to the Fylde were willing to face in their ignorance.
Colouring in old postcards, incidentally, is excellent therapy and we recommend it to most people reading this board.
Here’s the first one, entitled ‘On the Cliffs, Blackpool’. (Presumably the words ‘Potential’ and ‘Death’ have been accidentally omitted from the start of that description.) Our colour scheme might have gone off a tangent from reality, but we estimate the photograph to be of the Edwardian period.


They’re all sitting right on the edge of the cliffs are that lot. No…look at them! They’re right on the edge, with their toes hanging over. That’s the sort of stuff that’d give your average Health and Safety Executive a stroke, that is. (Well…if he could get close enough to some of those ladies in their tight bodices and laced-up ankle boots he’d have stroke, anyhow.)
It’s a wonder, given the precarious nature of the cliffs and the fact that Uncle Tom’s Cabin had a habit of falling off them every few years, that the whole lot didn’t give way.
There is a good reason for such a large crowd, in case you’re wondering. In Victorian and Edwardian times Lancashire factories would close for a week during the summer, to give their workers a well-earned break. As a result entire communities took their holidays at the same time. These events were known as Wakes Weeks, an evolution of the mediaeval Wakes Holy Days (from which the word ‘holiday’ derives). We’ve written about them before on this board in considerably more detail, so if you’re that way inclined, you can go and look them up. (And that’s about as much proper history as you’re going to get in this particular article.)
Here’s another photograph of Bispham cliffs that’d have the Health and Safety People waking up in a cold sweat (whether out of fear or pleasure I wouldn’t hazard to guess).


Bah gum, look at the steepness of that…not to mention the lopsided angle of it. A vertiginous set of steps if ever there was one, leading down the cliff face near Bispham tram station; particularly difficult to navigate, we suspect, when wearing high heels and dresses resembling meringues like the two picnickers on the beach at the bottom.
Beats most of the white knuckle rides at the pleasure beach, does that one. Those two kids about a sixth of the way up look as though they’re paralysed with fear. It puts one in mind of the old nursery rhyme:

‘Jack and Jill went down the cliff, to fetch a pail of seashells.
Jack fell down and bust his neck and then lay perfectly still in a small crumpled heap with his head staved in on the rocks.’

There have been a few improvements from a safety perspective since the lower promenade was added. For a start fewer walruses like the one in the photograph plunge to their deaths from the cliffs now. It’s also considerably easier for wheelchair access nowadays, I would imagine.
One last somewhat disturbing image from about the same period then:


“Go on, Son. Jump oop un’ doon on’t. Let’s see what ’appens!”
This particular postcard is entitled ‘The Steps, Bispham’ although ‘Death on Stilts’ would make a reasonable alternative title.
As you can see, it’s difficult to imagine this complicated construction of rickety planks standing up to a typical Fylde coast gale, which is probably why it isn’t there any longer. Nowadays, of course, the slades are all fashioned from concrete and shored up with rocks, transforming them into ideal racetracks for cyclists and exciting bob sleigh runs in the winter, where pedestrians and dog walkers can be targeted as human skittles.

A Selection of Fieldnames from Thornton: Part Two

We mentioned in the last section of this article that the ‘Old Earth’ fields denoted the northern most boundaries of the Saxon township of Bourne and, of course, if you check our tithe map again you’ll see that this is obviously the case. We’ve highlighted them in red on the detail below to save you the trouble of having to search for them.


You’ll notice that just above them (as the directionally challenged crow flies) is a mediaeval field called Green Dicks Hey. Don’t ask, because we don’t know, and as much as we’d like to believe that the name alludes to a farmer suffering from a medical complaint, there’s also a Dicks Mill in Carleton, so it was probably just some local play on words. (Come to think of it, Dicks might actually be the local pronunciation of dykes.) Whatever the case, originally no doubt the Old Earth fields would have reached into this area as well. During the mediaeval period a lot of the Saxon tenement field boundaries were removed to open the fields into the shapes we’d more commonly recognise nowadays.
Next to the Old Earth fields, highlighted in yellow (we’ve thought of everything to make your lives easier) is Borty Berry and Bottom Burty Berry. (Go on…get it out of your systems. It sounds a bit like bottom burpy berry, we know. There…better now?)
According to one book on Lancashire fieldnames that we own, the title of which I’ve currently forgotten, which is perhaps as well under the circumstances, ‘Bortyberry’ refers to a field that once had a berry from a bor tree in it.
Yes, well, I can see that, can’t you? Imagine the scene, a wild and woolly night in a Thornton farmhouse, the farmer tamping tobacco into his pipe bowl in front of a roaring log fire whilst his stuffed toy of a son watches the smoke curl up the chimney.

“Jus’ gone darn tha Bortee Burri field, will ’as Our Granville? Av left me flat cap ont’ geetpost.”
“Which one’s Bortee Burri, Da?”
“As one at as un berry roight int’ middle onnit.”
“An berry, Da?”
“Aye…jus’ twon. Right slap bang int middle. An burri, an’ this is vera importuant d’y’ear…” He leans closer and indicates the severity of the case by poking his idiot son in the ribs with his pipe. “An burri from as bor tree.”
“Warts a bor tree, Da?”
“Dunno son. It’s sommat what arv just meed oop. An’ mind y’ don’t get yon field mixed oop with Burtee Burri neither.”
“Burtee Burri, Da?”
“S’reet son. Thart’s t’won next do-oor. T’won wi’ a burri in t’ middle onnit, wat comes from a ‘bur’ tree.”
“You mean, like t’other one further oop, Da, wi’ berry int middle onnit wat comes from a ‘bar’ tree?”
“Thart’s t’one, son. Nay booger off before ye get t’toe o’me clog wedg’d oop tarse.”

All right…you get the point. The Lancashire fieldnames book has almost certainly got this one wrong.
By our reckoning (which is what really counts) the ‘berry’ in ‘borty berry, burty berry and barty berry’ refers to a burg. (That’s an ancient enclosed – more often than not fortified – settlement.) Take that other Lancashire Bury, for example. We all know that was originally a burg and not just a small round edible object much sought after by hungry birds.
As for the ‘bor’, ‘bur’ and ‘bar’, clearly they all stem from the same local dialect root ‘bur’, recorded by Thornber as meaning the ‘edge or rim’ of something. I remember when I were nobbut a kid my grandmother warning me when opening a can (this was back in the days when tin openers were none-electronic, dangerously sharp and pointed objects) not to cut myself on the ‘bur’ (that being the jagged strip of metal around the lid).
Therefore all these fields denote the edge of the burg, which makes perfect sense when you come to look at how they relate to the Saxon tenement fields.
So that’d be the burg of Brun then, or to put it another way, Brun Burgh.
Don’t even get me started. I realise nobody wants to believe that Brunanburgh ever took place in Thornton, despite the ancient legend that a huge Norse battle once covered Bourne Hill, so I won’t even go there. Let’s move on…


Right, we’ve coloured in/highlighted a couple more fields for you. In red on the right hand side is Grapy Field. We figured that a name like that would obviously mean something, and, after a huge amount of research (almost three and a half minutes spent on Google) we discovered that Grapy is an Old English/ French word (so that’d be around the Saxon/Norman period then) meaning…er…grape-like. As in, “This tastes rather grapy.”
Exactly what that’s got to do with the field in question I honestly couldn’t say.
The other field highlighted above (in yellow) is Biggins Field. We’re on much safer ground here. Biggins is a Norse word referring to a new house (and not a jolly rotund gay bloke who used to be in Porridge), all of which suggests that between one and one and half thousand years ago some Norse geezer constructed his abode smack bang in the middle of this field.
Incidentally, in case you’re wondering, Biggins Field is nowadays underneath the Wolsey Close, Ingleway, Hampton Place area off Cumberland Avenue, so if you happen to live in one of those closes it might be worth checking your flowerbeds carefully, because you never know what might be in there. Even better, give Wyre Archaeology a bell and we’ll take a gander for you.


Right, a couple more then -- the first being Garlick’s Hey, as highlighted above in blue. Please note the spelling. It’d be easy to assume that this field just south of Hillylaid crossing on Lawson’s Road was where garlic was once grown. Such an assumption would, however, be incorrect. Terry Pratchett knew what he was doing when he named one of his Lancre witches Magrat Garlick, Magrat because her mother couldn’t spell, and Garlick because Garlick is actually a Lancashire dialect word (now mostly fallen out of use, I suspect) meaning ‘Simpleton’.
Then there’s Tinkler’s Hey, which we’ve highlighted in yellow. We’ve no real suggestions for this one except, perhaps, that it’s either a mispronunciation of ‘Tinker’s Hey’ or that it was just one of those fields that was used as a convenience. (Boom boom!)
Lastly (although there are plenty of other fieldnames worth mentioning on this map, such as Mill Hey on the corner of Crabtree Road, which is nowhere near Marsh Mill and therefore suggests that a more ancient mill, no documents for which survive, once stood in the vicinity, but we’re not going to because this article’s gone on way too long as it is) there’s Castle Field, otherwise known as Castle Hill, highlighted below.


To the best of our knowledge no castle has ever stood on, near, or in the vicinity of Castle Hill/Field, which means only thing. Castles were the Saxons’ way of describing ancient fortified earthworks – ancient and ruinous in Saxon times I should point out -- so the chances are, some prehistoric (possibly Roman) settlement once stood here. Not that we’re ever likely to find out now because somebody went and built the ICI right on top of it.
Enough…I’m all field-named out. Time for a change of tack with the next posting I reckon.

A Selection of Fieldnames from Thornton: Part One

Melanie from the ‘Thornton Through Time’ website (otherwise known to our forum readers as ‘History Hunter’) has been busy recently. She’s the best researcher Wyre Archaeology doesn’t have. One of these days we’re going to convince her to sign up proper. (I’m extemporising again, aren’t I? Best get on before everyone disappears to You Tube in search of Susan Boyle.)
Melanie, as I was saying, during one of her rainy afternoon trawls through the various Lancashire record repositories came across the following item and kindly sent me a copy. What is it? It’s a tithe map of Bourne, Holmes and Trunnah, that’s what, with some interesting fieldnames on it. If you’re wondering why it resembles a patchwork eiderdown, Melanie photographed it in sections and I’ve done my best to reassemble it.


Writing too small? Well, just be patient and we’ll enlarge some of the individual sections for you. In the meantime, just so that you can gather your bearings, that’s Marsh Mill right at the bottom there, and that wriggly field boundary towards the top left corner is part of the dyke following the defensive embankments round the bottom of Bourne Hill. (Unfortunately Bourne Hill itself isn’t on the map, which is a shame because we still don’t know what the hill’s actual name is. We’ve always called it Bourne Hill because that basically describes it, although our name seems to have resonated with people and even the great and the good are calling the place Bourne Hill nowadays.)
Right, it’s time for some of those fieldnames, so here’s a detail of the aforementioned tithe map (the copyright owner, of which, we’ve lost track of, so apologies if we’re unintentionally treading on anybody’s toes here).


The road running from just below the top left corner to about two thirds of the way along the bottom edge is Fleetwood Road, Fleetwood itself being somewhere off the left hand side of the map, Thornton being somewhere off the right. (If you’re one of our Australian or American readers this probably doesn’t make a lot of sense. Then again, I suspect, very little of what appears on this board makes much sense to anybody, anywhere, anyhow, so welcome to the club.)
The Old Earth fields (you can hunt these down for yourself on the map if you like…it’s cheaper than buying a Word Search magazine) are mentioned in various old documents as being the outskirts of the Saxon Township of Brun. We’ll come back to them shortly.
The Stanny Furlong fields are the intriguing bit. (At least they are as far as I’m concerned.) Stanny derives from the Saxon word ‘Stanig’ meaning ‘stony’, indicating presumably that, back in Saxon times, our Stanny Furlong fields were full of stones. (It should be remembered that, even though these tithe maps were drawn up in the mid-nineteenth century, the names recorded on them often reach back hundreds, if not thousands, of years.) ‘Stony’ fields are, more often than not, the result of ancient cobbled roads lying beneath the soil. Was this the original route of the Danes Pad, perhaps?
Well, no, probably not. As far as we can tell (and there’s bound to be some debate about this, so I hesitate to mention it) the Danes Pad never actually reached the Fleetwood Peninsula, crossing the River Wyre somewhere around Skippool and then continuing on the other side towards Preesall Hill along Highgate Lane (where, of course, we dug up a section of it last summer).
No…the Stanny Furlong fields are far more likely to have contained our Celtic track running from Nateby, via Stanah, up through Thornton and to the base of Bourne Hill. We know that the track exists on the hill itself (because we’ve dug it up) and (on the other side of Thornton) it emerges from beneath the housing estate on Stanah Road, but we lose it completely under the sprawl of Thornton itself. Unfortunately, over the last couple of centuries most of the fields on our tithe map have been ‘developed’ so, whatever the case, the enigma of the Stanny Furlong fields will have to remain just that.
Take a look at this:


That’s the same section of map we showed you a moment ago with a couple of areas highlighted. Note the shape of the fields we’ve coloured in, paying close attention to the central road (now hidden by houses) dividing them. That’s typical of Saxon villages, that is, in this case the Saxon village of Bourne (or Brun as it was known in those days).
Those strip fields were called ‘tenement strips’, each one originally containing its own dwelling place. They were basically the Dark Age equivalent of market gardens, each householder working the strip of land to the rear of his/her property.
The fields highlighted in yellow are still there, (at least they are at the time of writing) separated from one another by typical Saxon ditches. Want a photograph? Go on then, you’ve twisted my arm.


That’s the rear of Springfield Drive in the background. Our missing Saxon village road (as shown on the map) is probably somewhere beneath the grass running around the back garden fences.
We’ve got more to say about this lot, but no doubt our reader would welcome a short break before we trouble him/her further.
Before we leave, however, one last fieldname (or set of fieldnames) worth a mention is (or possibly are) Arley. Arley still exists as a location, of course, Great Arley School (where as kids we used to go swimming) occupying the area nowadays. We were curious as to what Arley meant and, as far as we can tell (although Wyre Archaeology’s expert in ancient languages, Dave Hampson, might have a few thoughts of his own to add to this conjecture) it stems from the Saxon root word ‘Arleas’, meaning ‘dishonourable or wicked’.
Having said that, it’s equally likely to stem from the other Saxon root word ‘Arlic’, meaning just plain ‘honourable’.
At the risk of insulting everybody who lives in Arley (both of them) I’d like to think it was the former.

Another Selection of Historical Titbits

Number Six: The Pirate of St Chad’s

In St Chad’s churchyard, in Poulton of course, (just behind the apse if memory serves) can be found one of the Wyre’s most enduring – if not highly inaccurate – oddities, that being the grave of a pirate as shown in the photograph below.


Generations of school kids (myself included) have re-enacted over the centuries the ritual of standing on the grave itself, reciting the lord’s prayer backwards and then depositing the contents of our noses on the stone slab (actually the legend suggests that you’re only meant to spit, but as children we were very thorough) in the hopes that the ghost of the evil pirate would rise from its resting place and reek havoc in the town.
We can state from personal experience that the ritual doesn’t work.
And it’s hardly surprising really given that the grave actually belonged to Edward Sherdley (gentleman) who died in 1711 and probably never got any closer to the sea during his life than with a bucket and spade at Rossall. The confusion arose amongst Poulton’s youthful inhabitants, of course, because of the skull and cross-bones motif carved into the stone, resembling (as testified by certain old films featuring Douglas Fairbanks Jr) the Jolly Roger flown by desperados on the high seas.
The skull and crossbones themselves were probably a Masonic symbol, which just goes to show that whilst being a mason might pay nepotistic dividends in life, in death it just results in kids covering your grave in phlegm.

Number Seven: Woodplumpton Stocks


Outside St. Anne’s church in Woodplumpton -- an extremely ancient church in its own right, but more about that on another occasion -- next to the lychgate stand the old village stocks. The right hand stone-support is carved with the initials ‘AB’ and the date ‘73’. We can take it as read that, as old as the church might be, it’s not that old and the century to which that date belongs was left off for reasons of spatial economy. The nearby wicket-gate has similarly carved posts, suggesting that they were carved at around the same time.
Behind the stocks, as can be seen in the photograph, are a step of mounting steps. In case you’re wondering these were used to clamber on and off horses (as explained a few weeks ago in our posting about the mounting steps attached to the cottage on Raikes Road in Stanah) and not for the locals to take a flying leap onto the heads of the prisoners incarcerated below.
Poulton, Kirkham and Garstang also had their own stocks. In Garstang’s case they were designed, like Woodplumpton’s, so that two criminals could sit side by side, with the added advantage that they were portable. Originally they would have been clamped onto the market cobbles as and when required. Unfortunately, as far as historical preservation is concerned, when not in use they were kept in the town hall attic. In 1939, wouldn’t you know it, the town hall roof caught fire quite spectacularly.
What became of the stocks we honestly couldn’t say, but their chances of having survived are slim.

Number Eight: Grizedale Beck Reservoir

Grizedale Beck Reservoir was created between 1861 and 1863 when the beck itself was damned. In the process an entire unexcavated Neolithic settlement site was destroyed by the ensuing flood, only the tallest spire of the central obelisk of the now drowned Grizedale Henge still being visible at the height of summer, when strange incantations in Ogham are said to be heard on midsummer’s eve.


All right, that last bit isn’t true. The facts about when the reservoir was first damned are accurate enough, we think, the stuff about the settlement isn’t. We just wanted to see if we could get our reader bobbing in frustration that’s all. To the best of our knowledge there were no archaeological sites lost when the reservoir was created, although we did pick up the following information off some site or other on the Internet:

“Grizedale is Norse for the valley of the wild pigs. The valley contains many birch and oak trees and gives an indication of what the whole valley might have been like in more ancient times."

What Cheek! A Potted History of the Blackpool Postcard (Part Two)

Right, where we were? Oh yes…
There were several notable cartoonists amongst the plethora producing such simple works of common folk art. These included John Hassall, Alfred Lees, Tom Browne, Bruce Bairnsfather and Donald McGill. The latter (i.e. McGill) came in for a right load of old stick, unfortunately, when the inevitable backlash against people enjoying themselves occurred in the 1950s.
The problem was, you see, the upper middle classes considered themselves the moral guardians of the proletariat. Whilst it was perfectly acceptable for those with the right sort of breeding to swan around art galleries studying plump naked women being raped by swans and stuff, the idea that ordinary, uneducated folk (who really ought to have been back in the factories filling up the coffers for the aristocracy) were allowed access to cheerful, slightly risqué material was completely unacceptable.
Similar hypocritical (not to mention classist) contentions continue to this day with the upper crust still trying to ban nudity from the television screens whilst allowing it in the theatre, or complaining about the brutality of boxing when, if the truth be known, more children die every year from accidents involving frisky horses than boxers kick the bucket by knocking ten barrels out of each other.
As every government knows, the trick to keeping plebeians submissive is to begrudgingly allow them just enough moral leniency that they actually believe they’re getting away with something. However, there is always a handful of ethical elite who takes their morality one step too far.
Watch Committees were established in seaside resorts such as Blackpool, and poor old McGill (at that time eighty-one years old) found himself prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act. A number of his postcards were even destroyed outright.
Or at least, they were supposed to be.
Want to see one? We thought you might…


Did I say it was going to be subtle? It’s intriguing to think that this was on public sale around the same time that George Formby was being banned by the BBC for the suggestive lyrics in his classic ‘Little Stick of Blackpool Rock’. Let’s face it McGill wasn’t pulling any punches, but...obscenity?
For a while the ‘Outraged Few’ got their way, shop owners were forced to withdraw their racks (ooh er) and a number of printers were even made bankrupt in the process. However, as was only to be expected, once again the tide of opinion turned, bringing with it the usual line of flotsam and jetsam.
For a few more decades the improper postcard graced every café, newsagent and ice cream stall in Blackpool, the standard of wit slowly depreciating as the boundaries of acceptability were eroded.


It takes a proper comedian to perfect his timing, something that many of the fast-buck postcard producers failed to take into account, and by the 1980s the public themselves were growing tired of the increasingly misogynistic cartoons. Some of the images now available had passed beyond sexism and were bordering on rape scenarios, and with the rise of politically correct sentiments (coupled with mounting numbers of visitors travelling abroad) the cheeky Blackpool postcard (much like Carry On films) wheezed it’s lecherous last – not with a bang, but with a whimper (again, another cracking caption perhaps).


Time has passed and we’re now in the post-ironic era, which is pretty much the same as the didn’t-know-better era but with the bonus that there’s a psuedo-intellectual explanation thrown in to excuse anything offensive. The accusations of sexism levelled at Blackpool’s early postcards can now be reappraised, not so much as a narrow, bigoted view of women in society, but as a time of female emancipation.


Perhaps the rotund landladies and domineering, rolling-pin carrying wives could still be considered misogynistic (because, let’s face it, there are no fat, unruly or violent women in Lancashire), but the cheeky Blackpool postcard (now regarded as a collectable museum piece) could better be seen as an historical and social document, not so much for what it says in the caption, but for what it doesn’t say.
That’s innuendo for you, all grown up and clever like.

What Cheek! A Potted History of the Blackpool Postcard (Part One)

We’ve written before about the hedonism of the ‘Wakes Weeks’ -- those pagan festivals of debauchery, the attempts by the church to stamp them out, the predictable failure of such attempts, and the introduction of Blackpool to accommodate them.
Every generation (since the time when society was allegedly created) has attempted to ban lewdness at some point or other, their successors reintroducing it under the mistaken belief that they’re the first generation ever to have discovered sex. From Chaucer’s bawdy tale of millers and pokers, to Queen Victoria’s covering-up of piano legs, from Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones to Mrs Beeton’s Household Management, the fluctuation of this cultural meme is as unpreventable as the ebb and flow of the tide was for King Cnut. (That’s the proper spelling of Kanute, incidentally. Apologies to any dyslexics reading this.)
With the introduction of paid annual leave for industrial workers during the Victorian and Edwardian periods, holiday resorts, with an eye to making a quick turnover, understandably latched onto the humble postcard. Dr Emanuel Hermann in Austria apparently invented the first one on the 1st of October 1869. Working folk back in those time weren’t renowned for their literary prowess, the compact blank space on the reverse of the card providing ample room for their succinct messages home.
The front of the postcards, of course, reflected the radical spirit of the times, the European market typically titillating its pleasure-seeking public with sophisticated soft porn such as this:

Blackpool, on the other hand, took an altogether more British approach to the genre:


Bawdy humour and smutty innuendo have been a staple of British amusements since Robin Hood committed the first known spoonerism with Friar Tuck, and have been seldom out of fashion amongst the lower orders ever since. Blackpool knew exactly what it was all about – a sort of Club 16 to 85 for the Victorian and Edwardian socially oppressed -- and the dirty postcard served not only to entertain its boorish customers but also as an advert for the town’s wanton degeneracy. Sex and beer, along with all their accompaniments, were all attractions high on the tourist board’s agenda.


Whilst Toulouse Lautrec, the artistic French midget, was drawing up designs involving strippers in Paris, the average British holidaymaker was making designs of his own on the drawers of the midgets stripping in the Eiffel Tower’s shorter cousin. (That was a convoluted comparison, but worth the effort I thought.)
This unsubtle difference between Britain and Europe’s attitudes towards sex has been reflected throughout our cultural history. When the French were exploring female emancipation with films such as Emmanuelle, we were producing ‘Confessions of a Window Cleaner’. They had Jacques Tatti, we had Benny Hill. Exactly what it is about sex that us Brits fail to take seriously it’s difficult to say, although a nation that eats frogs’ legs and snails probably finds little to laugh about in bed.


Let’s not beat about the bush here (an ideal caption for one of the cartoons now that I come to think about it) – the average humorous postcard wasn’t subtle in the slightest. Innuendo, vulgar pun, double-entendre, call them what you will but the unrefined, less-than-ambiguous sexual references have always been part of Blackpool’s intrinsic character. (The tower itself is proof of this, if proof was ever needed, of course.)


But enough…we’ve run out of room. (By gum Missus!) Let’s take a short breather and meet back up behind the beach huts in a few days time, eh?