8 SCIENTIFIC SURVEY OF BLACKPOOL AND DISTRICT 



These show that they must have inhabited it in considerable numbers and for 

 a long period, but the sites worth preserving are few, the most noteworthy 

 being the Bleasdale Circle. Those interested will find a full account in the 

 Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society for 1889 

 and 1900, Vols. XVII. and XVIII.; in the first, a short paper by the dis- 

 coverer, S. Jackson, Esq., and in the latter, a full and complete description 

 with scale drawings by Professor Boyd Dawkins, D.Sc, F.R.S., F.S.A. 



While the Setantii did not plan, their name, and that given in very early 

 times to the region they inhabited, give us a clue to the nature of the area as it 

 was in the early days in which they lived, and of factors which then existed and 

 which possessed such individuality that they have controlled and explain much 

 that we find to-day in the region. Their name means ' the dwellers in the 

 country of the waters,' and that of their country ' Amounderness,' from the 

 Gaelic Ac, an oak ; Mund, protection ; and Ness, a promontory, clearly 

 indicated that their country was a promontory densely covered with oak forests 

 and protected by the sea on three sides, by dense forests on the higher and 

 drier parts, and by bogs unpassable to anyone but those who knew them well, 

 and were inured to considerable periods of immersion in water, thus giving 

 them sanctuary, either from more warlike tribes, or those from which they had 

 fled outcast. 



And the same picture of our area is conjured up by what we find wherever 

 the old peat deposits are cut in two. Under Marton Moss, for example, lay 

 the remains of a great oak forest obviously felled in its prime by an inundation 

 of the sea, probably accompanied by a furious hurricane ; and elsewhere are 

 indications of the same state of things : where land has been swallowed up by 

 the sea, the stumps of a forest remain visible at very low water. 



This is what the Romans discovered when they arrived, and bearing this in 

 mind, there has always been a large element of scepticism on the part of modern 

 antiquarians as to the Romans ever having set foot in the area, notwithstanding 

 the fact that it has been littered all over with Roman remains. The position 

 would seem to be this — What should the Romans want to come here for? 

 If there are Roman remains, surely they may be accounted for by the fact 

 that Roman methods of life were adopted by the Britons? 



All the known facts, however, seem to be against the opposition, because 

 in a close examination of the region we find so much in conditions as they are 

 to-day which is most easily accounted for by the more popular tradition that 

 Romans did come here. Indeed, we find the key to the whole position in 

 Ptolomy's map of the coast, which gives us substantial grounds for supposing 

 that the Roman port, ' Portus Setantiorum,' known to have existed in the 

 neighbourhood, was in fact at a point where the channel of the River Wyre 

 discharges into Lune Deeps, as the measurements he gives correspond more 

 nearly with that position than with any other. We have this further fact to 

 our aid, that at this point the channel has a vertical wall. Local navigators 

 confirm this by the confident assertion that there is a masonry wall, the 

 remains of a big wharf now sunk beneath the sea. Local antiquarians, on 

 the other hand, postulate an outcrop of rock with a vertical face, either of 

 sandstone like the neighbouring Preesal Hill, or limestone found a few miles 

 away at and around Warton and the Carnforth district. In either case we 



