POULTON-LE-FYLDE IN FOCUS
“The town of Poulton-le-Fylde is a small, irregular and old fashioned place, on a gentle eminence, with the tower of the church rising midst of its seven streets.”
Edward Baines, The History of the County Palatine and Duchy of Lancaster, Vol.2 1870
“By the last century [19th], markets for cattle and cloth were being held on 3rd February, 13th April, and 5th November, with a weekly fair on Mondays; such was the importance of the weekly market that it was augmented in 1847 by the introduction of a fortnightly cattle fair supplied by Irish dealers operating through the new port of Fleetwood.”
D. Foster, Poulton-le-Fylde – A Nineteenth Century Market Town, February 1878
These two descriptions of the town adequately sum up the small market town close to the growing port of Fleetwood. In the previous century, Poulton (the abbreviated name will suffice from now on) was also a port relying on its harbour of Skippool, based on a tidal creek in the River Wyre. The tiny port depended on coastal traffic with other local ports in Lancashire, Cumberland and Westmorland.
There were imports of guano, flax (for the linen trade) and timber from the Baltic ports and even from Russia. A small-scale concentration of industries based on these was located in Poulton. The illegal trade in smuggling was reputed to have taken place in Skippool.
The population of Poulton hovered around 1,000 in late the eighteenth century, before going into a decline with the rise of Fleetwood in the 1840s. In 1831 the town’s population numbered 1,065. The figure stagnated until 1871 when the figure stood at 1,161. According) “Any explanation of this has to be sought in the failure of Poulton-le-Fylde to expand to the challenge of the new industrial society which is the principal feature of nineteenth century Britain.”
