The Fylde & Wyre Antiquarian

Always complain, Brian and the Chief Executives office is always top of my hit list for any company that has badly let me down.

I realise it could have been coincidental (the brick fields), but it also crossed my mind that what was good for bricks in Victorian times might also have been good or bricks in Roman times...just a passing thought.

Brian, I'm not sure who to approach re this matter...I contribute to www.fgsonline.co.uk (ex-Fleetwood Grammar School people's site). When we are not falling out (and believe me there's been some humdingers...fingers have been digitally pointed and access has been withdrawn) we do get a few good pieces posted. Well, I referred the Fylde and Wyre Antiquarian link to our current membership a week or two back and they were quite taken with the aerial shots of the Fylde (plus some of the local history stuff). We've got a couple of pieces ongoing re the Fylde coast and wondered if we could use one or two of the aerial shots to illustrate one of the pieces? Obviously, we'd acknowlege the source plus I could ask our editor to put a link in from our site to yours which may increase the traffic you pick up...notice I haven't mentioned money! Could you ask whoever has copyright if us old scholars could be allowed to crib a couple of your piccies?

Cheers Brian, have made a contact through your message service.

Two more views of the golf course, first, the ponds, then the second one is a blow-up showing what apear to be remains of some features or structures. The one centre right I think could be the remains of the gun butts mentioned earlier, but in the lower left there is the trace of a rectangular feature on the same allignment. Anyone care to speculate?

Thinking about those features later (in bed, sad or what), I wouldn't be surprised if they were constructed parallell to the coast at the time.

I'm not saying the structures in the photo are remnants of the points where targets were raised, but until sometime in the last 20 years there existed 2 brick faced structures (brick faced on the sea wall side, but covered with sloping, grassed earth on the other) they were quite large. Latterly, they were used to house tractors and other groundsmans equipment used for greenkeeping. Their original use was for target hoisting (and all the associated equipment and men), so that targets could be hoisted without risk of having a .303 round blowing your head off (or whatever calibre was used before the Lee Enfield existed). I'm not sure why they were demolished, but as kids we used to climb up the sloping side and sit on the top surveying our world (only on quiet days when we were on holiday and no golfers were out).

This structure (in the distance, just before the wall) is the remnant of one of these target structures, taken in 2006. If you line up with your back to Rossall Grange Lane, to the left of the Club House buildings, along the fence line, then that's were I took this picture from.

And here's a close up, hopefully I've sized this one correctly (apologies for my ham-fisted sizing skills.

Although not strictly speaking related directly to Rossall Beach, Frank has asked me to load this short essay on a walk to Lune Deeps. It was written, we think, about 1964, by R.W. Sutcliffe, then a pupil at Fleetwood Grammar School, for the school magazine and it is brought to you courtesy of R.W. Sutcliffe, the fgsonline editor, Bob Rotheram and www.fgsonline.co.uk.