HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY 33 



large measure under cultivation. Nucleated settlements seem to have arisen 

 at Poulton, Kirkham, Little Marton, Layton, Bispham and Singleton, 

 apparently names due to Northumbrian settlers, while it has been said that 

 Danish settlements were inclined to straggle along a road. Elswick is an 

 interesting type of village with three parallel roads, the middle one the chief, 

 and cross connections ; Newton has analogies with it. ' Double ' villages 

 occur in the Fylde named great and little respectively, e.g., at Marton and 

 Bispham. 



Mediaeval conditions in the Fylde went on into the seventeenth century, 

 by which time, however, the name Fylde had come into use as a general 

 designation, showing a popular consciousness extending beyond the manor, 

 but the areas important at the time of Domesday remained important still. 



The villages are mostly at or above the 25 feet contour, and the lower limit 

 of cultivated land, of old days, might be about 20 feet, or the edge of the moss. 

 Most land below 20 feet remained as waste or hawes with common rights of 

 pasturage and of gathering rushes for thatching ; much of this old waste land 

 is now split up into smallish fields drained by dykes. The old cultivated 

 fields were often called townfields, and were divided into strips for the families 

 of the village as usual. More land might be added from the waste when 

 necessary, and apparently monastic influence, exerted from Lytham, promoted 

 this. Towards the eighteenth century enclosures took place, and pasturing 

 and individual cultivation, followed by the spread of the practice of marking, 

 came into general use, large landowners generally profiting at the expense of 

 the small ones. There are no Acts of Parliament about enclosure of common 

 fields in the Fylde, but several from 1761 to 1801 deal with enclosure from 

 the waste, a process which, accompanied by drainage, had begun early in the 

 century ; and before the end of the eighteenth century nearly all common 

 fields had been enclosed, and the Fylde had become the granary of Lancashire, 

 a change accompanied by a notable development of windmills. 



Not far from the Fylde is the ancient chapel of St. Patrick at Heysham, 

 a reminder of the influence of the Celtic church. The hundred of Amounder- 

 ness came to be attached ecclesiastically to York, but Lancashire between 

 Ribble and Mersey belonged to the diocese of Lichfield from 923 onwards until 

 1541. 



When archdeaconries were created, Amoundemess was m the archdeaconry 

 of Richmond, and Lancashire between Ribble and Mersey in that of Chester. 

 A see of Chester was created in 1541, and Lancashire was divided into two 

 archdeaconries belonging to it. Modern changes have brought Amoundemess 

 first under Manchester and then under Blackburn. Professor James Tait 

 infers that churches existed at Kirkham, Poulton and St. Michaels-on-Wyre 

 at the time of the Domesday Survey, and the two first are mentioned in a 

 document of 1093. In a Taxatio of 1291 additional parishes of Lytham and 

 Garstang are mentioned. By the end of the twelfth century a Benedictine 

 priory had been founded as a dependency of Durham at Lytham with a 

 dedication to St. Cuthbert inherited by the modern church. 



Just beyond the Fylde to the north-east were the Praemonstratensian abbey, 

 St. Mary of Cockersand and a house of Austin Canons at Cockerham. 

 Ecclesiastical records indicate that the district suffered very severely from the 



