•AMOUNDERNESS ' : A REGIONAL SURVEY OF THE FYLDE 15 



or otherwise, would be necessary. This is by no means the case. For 

 instance, in Garstang Churchtown churchyard, the heavy base of the old 

 cross has been torn from its traditional site and used as part of the base of a new 

 and modern cross to the east of the chancel, only a portion of the old shaft 

 being left to mark its original and traditional position. 



The term ' weeping cross ' may not be familiar. Before the days of the 

 hearse, when the dead were necessarily borne by the mourners all the way 

 to the church, funeral parties used to stop at places en route to rest the bearers. 

 These established places were marked by crosses, and Fishwick in his History 

 of Garstang, says : 



' There are people still living who remember seeing Roman Catholic 

 funeral processions pause and rest the coffin at the remains of the cross 

 near Cross House in Kirkham.' 



Market crosses may in many instances have begun as preaching crosses, 

 though later on they attained a more secular use. The extent was remarkable 

 to which they served to sanctify a bargain, or give authority to a proclamation, 

 and even a highway robber or other cut-throat would leave immune a lonely 

 traveller who could reach a cross before being overtaken. 



Boundary crosses had primarily a secular purpose. Indeed, some of those 

 marked on the map, and the remains of which still exist, may, quite con- 

 ceivably never have been crosses at all, but merely upright, armless posts. 

 That at Greenlands, now standing uprooted at the side of the Garstang bye-pass, 

 has every appearance of being of that class, and its removal, however necessary, 

 is thus the more to be deplored as rendering any reference to it unintelligible 

 which may occur in any ancient monastic or other records. In other cases the 

 boundary stone did take the form of a cross, especially when it marked the 

 confines of or other points on the lands of Cockersands Abbey. Crawley's 

 Cross, at a sharp angle in the northern boundary of the area east of Stake Pool, 

 and thus on the boundary of the Hundreds of Lonsdale and Amounderness, 

 partakes of the latter character. Doubtless this form of landmark was 

 definitely more inviolable, especially in superstitious days. 



The existence of three holy wells which were at one time within this area 

 has been traced as follows : — 



1. The Fairy Well, Preesall. 



2. St. Ellin's Well, Bleasdale. 



3. The Holy Well, Bispham. 



None of these remains. The site of that just north of Preesall Hill is 

 marked on the Archeological Map, and the one at Bispham, though in existence 

 in 1867, has since been filled up. None had crosses so far as can be traced ; 

 if they had, they have disappeared. 



