16 SCIENTIFIC SURVEY OF BLACKPOOL AND DISTRICT 



III. 



THE FYLDE 



The Fylde has been so named as a distinctive region or pays in the French 

 sense from at least the late thirteenth century. Camden (1590) says that the 

 ancient hundred of Amounderness ' has rich pastures especially on the sea 

 side which is partly champain, whence part of it seems to be called the File, 

 q.d. the Field.' Later forms are Field, File, Filde and Fylde, the last accepted 

 as the modern name of the rural district. The etymology of the name may not 

 be that suggested by Camden. 



It is popularly assumed to include the plain between the Ribble Estuary and 

 Morecambe Bay west of the Preston-Lancaster main road, but originally it 

 was bounded north of the river Wyre by Pilling, Winmarleigh and Cockerham 

 mosses, forming the Over- Wyre district. 



Its eastern boundary was probably that of the modern rural district about 

 five or six miles west of the main road mentioned. Within that area occur 

 all the windmills for corn-milling, for which the Fylde was famous, and most of 

 the villages with the appellation le-Fylde, to distinguish them from villages 

 of the same name in other parts of the county. 



On the western side of the line lies the village of Field Plumpton, on the 

 eastern that of Wood Plumpton. 



Not until the nineteenth century did the needs of the industrial north bring 

 into existence the belt of littoral resorts which to-day make the sharp contrast 

 between the urbanised coast and the still essentially rural interior. Of these 

 Blackpool in the centre and Lytham St. Annes in the south-west corner are 

 the largest. In the north-west the port of Fleetwood, at the mouth of the 

 Wyre, has developed great fishing activities and has also acquired a residential 

 character 



GEOLOGY AND PHYSICAL FEATURES 



BY 



R. KAY GRESSWELL, MA, F.R.G.S. 



The underlying Triassic Keuper Marl, giving place along a N.-S. fault-line 

 to Bunter eastwards and probably some Permian in the north-east, is hidden 

 everywhere by thick glacial drift with superimposed peat, alluvium and blown 

 sand. The hummocky surface forms 50-100 feet cliffs between Blackpool 

 and Bispham, falls eastward to a line of low Carrs continuing southwards 

 the line of the lower Wyre, and then rises eastwards to somewhat over 1 00 feet. 



