A Traditional Fylde Home

Abstract

ALTHOUGH Blackpool, that piece of sea-stained Victoriana, which caters for millions of people each year, is well known, its hinterland . the Fylde is a comparatively unknown area particularly rich in cruck buildings; some of these may date from the fourteenth century or earlier. The Fylde, anciently the Cornfield of Amoundernesse, is a flat peninsula rarely rising more than :fiftyfeet above sea-level on the clay islands which stand out of what was once peat moss. As with Celtic areas elsewhere, the popular dwelling was in the main single-storeyed with farm buildings under the same roof, and the people more prone to lead independent lives than those of the co-operative community. These traditional farmsteads were built of wattle and daub (called locally clat and clay) supported from a cruck-truss frame, a method of building which persisted into the eighteenth century. Even those who could afford brick at the close of the seventeenth century invariably built on the traditional plan or simply removed the clay walls of their homes and replaced them with brick. Those who lived close to the coast did their house repairs or rebuilding with cobblestones, not the large round ones so popular with the nineteenth-century local revival, but carefully selected flat stones which were laid like bricks. The embodiment: of Fylde housing tradition and the effect of changing fashion is found in a house at Saltcotes, on the eastern fringe of Lytham. Here the three-bay house would have originally been of clay, but all except one wall have been replaced by cobbles. The one remaining clay wall is fairly certain to have always been an internal one because it is of even thickness right to the top. Had it been an external gable the clay would have been built from a wide base narrowing to about one foot thick at the apex. To enter a room with walls built in this manner gives one an extraordinarily insecure sensation. The main feature of Saltcotes and Fylde houses before the middle of the eighteenth century is that the entrance is opposite the hearth; this necessitated screening off the fire by a wood or clay partition which is known as a spere or jaumb. This partition is also a support for the end of the hearth-beam which carries the clat and clay hood which was supposed to collect the smoke from the