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CHAPTER VII.
PARISH OF POULTON-LE-FYLDE.
POULTON.
The ancient town and port of Poulton occupies the
summit of a gentle ascent about one mile removed
from the waters of Wyre at Skippool, and three
from the Irish Sea at Blackpool. Between 1080 and
'86, Poltun, as it was written in the Norman Survey, contained no
more than two carucates of land under tillage, or in an arable
condition, so that out of the 900 acres composing the township,
only 200 were cultivated by the inhabitants. A considerable
proportion of the entire area of the township, however, would be
covered with lofty trees, and provide excellent forage ground for
large herds of swine, which formed the chief live-stock dealt in by
our Anglo-Saxon and early Norman ancestors. Taking this into
consideration, the comparatively small amount of soil devoted to
agriculture, may not, indeed, indicate so meagre a population
about the close of the eleventh century as otherwise it would
seem to do, but still the evidence adduced is barely sufficient
whereon to base the assumption that the antecedents of Poulton
had been less under the destructive influence of the Danes than
those of its neighbours. Regarding the locality more retrospectively,
and turning back, for a brief space, to the era of the Romans,
it must be admitted that nothing has as yet been discovered
which could be construed into an intimation that the followers of
Agricola, or their descendants, ever had a settlement or encampment
on the site. It is true that the churchyard has yielded up
many specimens of their ancient coinage, whilst others have been
