60 SCIENTIFIC SURVEY OF BLACKPOOL AND DISTRICT 



past and present generations of public-spirited citizens, but it may well be 

 claimed that the development of transport, and of railway transport in 

 particular, has played a leading part in the creation of the Fylde of to-day. 



In the following pages an endeavour has been made to trace the history of 

 transport in the Fylde area from the primitive tracks of early times to the 

 speedy aeroplane of the present age. 



Transport in the Pre-Railway Era. 



Remnants of a track or road made of the trunks of trees cut to a uniform 

 length, found in the old peat beds of Pilling Moss, point to the Romans as 

 being probably the first people to attempt the actual construction of roadways 

 in the Fylde district. This track, known locally as ' Kate's Pad,' is believed 

 to have been made by the Romans across the moor to link Lancashire with the 

 Fylde via the Wyre ford at Poulton. Traces of Wathng Street on the western 

 side of Preston indicate that at one time a section of it ran from Ribchester 

 to Kirkham, with branches (designated from time immemorial as the ' Dane's 

 Pad ') to the Wyre at Poulton and Fleetwood and to the Ribble at Freckleton, 

 thus providing further evidence that there was some sort of transport in the 

 district from early times. 



After the Romans left Britain, properly made roads were a rarity until the 

 advent and establishment of the stage coach in the late eighteenth century, and 

 even the best of the old coach roads was very crude measured by present 

 standards. Writing in 1 770, Mr. Arthur Young (' A Tour through the North 

 of England ') gives the following description of the road between Wigan and 

 Preston : — 



' I know not in the whole language terms sufficiently expressive to describe 

 this infernal road. Let me caution travellers to avoid it as they would the 

 devil, for a thousand to one but they break their necks or their limbs by 

 overthrows or breaking downs. They will meet with ruts, which I actually 

 measured, four feet deep and floating with mud only from a wet summer. 

 What, therefore, must it be after a winter ? The only mending it receives is 

 a tumbling in of some loose stones, which serve no other purpose but jolting 

 the carriage in the most intolerable manner. These are not merely opinions, 

 but facts, for I actually passed three carts broken down in this 18 miles of 

 execrable memory.' 



As this was the main road (Wigan — Preston-Lancaster), what must have 

 been the condition of the minor roads in the Fylde ? And to add to the 

 difficulties of travellers, the highways were infested with footpads and robbers. 



Stage coaches appear to have commenced serving the Fylde on August 1st, 

 1780, when the coach running on Mondays and Wednesdays from Manchester 

 to Bolton, Chorley and Blackburn was extended to Blackpool. The journey 

 from Manchester to Blackpool took the whole day, starting at 6-0 a.m., and 

 after a change of vehicle and an interval for dinner at Preston, Blackpool was 

 reached late the same night. 



It was not until 1816 that coaches began to run with any regularity between 

 Preston and Blackpool, and there is no certainty that this service was con- 

 sistently maintained, because the Rev. Wm. Thornber, in his ' History of 



