Bilsborrow, Lancashire

This rural village is on the A6 about 14 miles south of Lancaster and seven miles north of Preston. At its centre is a war memorial in memory of servicemen from the three parishes of Bilsborrow, Myerscough and Barton. Their boundaries divide the modern village, even cutting through the bowling green of the Rowbuck Inn, and this makes tracing Bilsborrow's history a confusing task.

Discovering Bilsborrow's history through its architecture can be equally puzzling. The 17th century look of Bilsborrow Hall is deceptive; it was built just before the First World War by the Eccles family and is now a judge's lodging. The original manor was built in 1654 on the site of Bilsborrow Hall Farm, which is the home of the prizewinning Bilsborrow herd of Fresian cattle.

Real thatching and an A-frame construction gives Guy's Eating Establishment an attractive meieval air, but it was built by John Toolan in the early 1970's on ground adjacent to School House Farm. This old house was the home of John Cross, who endowed the village school in 1718. In 1797 the Lancaster Canal was built within yards of it. In the 1980's School House Farm was transformed into Owd Nell's pub and customers come to laze by the canal on summer evenings.

Notable 17th century buildings include Matshead Farm, built in 1618 by the River Brock. The Green Man was a toll house on the turnpike from London to Scotland (now the A6) and the White Bull Inn has a real fire in its winter hearth.

The original Myerscough Hall disappeared to make way for the Lancashire College of Agriculture. Nothing original survives of Myerscough Lodge, the home of Thomas Tyldesley, the Roman Catholic recusant whose diary of 1712 to 1714 throws a fascinating light on the life of the lesser gentry of the times. However, Brook House, visited by John Wesley in 1775, still remains. The Methodist Chapel in Bilsborrow Lane was opened in 1811 on the side of an old pothouse.

Built in the Early English style, St Hilda's Church came into being because Jane Salisbury of Myerscough Hall met an untimely death crossing the railway at Brock Station in 1922. She left her Estate to build the Church, which was consecrated in 1927. The peal of eight bells was added later and draws keen bell-ringers from near and far.

The oldest surviving building in Bilsborrow village, is what remains of the wattle and daub cottage in the yard of Raby's Farm, now adjacent to the M6 motorway. But there again... is it really Bilsborrow? The parish boundary snips its way across the cobbles of the farmyard leaving the cottage apparently in Barton!

Bilsborrow has some 30 businesses, including dairy farms, nurseries, haulage contractors, a well-established caravan park, a transport café, post office and working bakery. [The bakery has now closed and is a fish and chip shop]. About half the population leaves the village each day to commute to work.

In this spacious village of trees and fields, gardens, hedgerows, underground springs and passing traffic, the surface soil is heavy, but beneath are rich reserves of sand and gravel. Fields in the north-west of he village have been restored since the last extraction of gravel which was shipped out on canal barges. It is rumoured that two of these barges sank in Bilsborrow basin.

Another mystery was the disappearance of a very large pipe left overnight in a ditch. Locals will tell you it sank in the quicksands which mark where an ancient coastline used to be.

The village calendar begins in January on Plough Sunday when a plough is taken into the Church for blessing. June is busy with the Children's Festival, a Strawberry Fair and a vicarage garden party. The produce show is in August and a Harvest Ball is held in September. People come from far and wide to whist drives, dances, football matches and antiques fairs and new activities keep appearing, such as microlight club on a local farm.

At present Bilsborrow is alive and well, though changing. In 1989 Duncombe House became an attractive hotel, offering annexe accommodation in canal barges and Brock Farm became a development of prestige houses. Plans are already in hand to extend tourist accommodation and to transform Head Nook Farm into a sand and gravel quarry. It is hopes that Bilsborrow can continue to be a living community, popular with country-loving visitors, where people can say "hello" and everyone knows almost everyone else.

Note: The village information above is taken from The Lancashire Village Book, written by members of the Lancashire Federation of Women's Institutes and published by Countryside Books. Click on the link Countryside Books to view Countryside's range of other local titles.