Where the hell is Poulton le Fylde? If you live in Oslo that is probably a very fair question, I shall try to explain.
The town of Poulton le Fylde is located in the North West of England in the county of Lancashire. Situated about 5 miles (8 Km) inland from the seaside town of Blackpool between the river Lune in the north and the river Ribble in the south, in a coastal plain known as the Fylde. The population is approximatly 20,000.
The town gained its name from Skipool, a tributory of the river Wyre, which lies less than a mile to the north east of the village. The name Poulton was created by combining the Old English words Pol, for pool or creek, and Tun, meaning a farmstead or enclosure. Thus the name signifies "settlement by the pool". In 1842 the suffix 'le-Fylde' was added with the advent of the "penny post" to distinguish the village from Poulton-le-Sands, a community further north, since renamed to Morecambe. Built on one of the few low hills in the western part of the Fylde, Poulton le Fylde became an busy medieaval, market town and important port on the river Wyre.
The village name appears in the Doomsday Book (1086) one of the 60 villages of Amounderness. The village is centered on St Chads church, dedicated to the seventh century Saxon Bishop. A church is thought to have exsisted on the site before Norman times although the fist record is dated 1094, recorded by Roger de Pitou a Norman knight who had been granted the district of Amounderness following the Norman conquest. The present structure is from three different periods, the oldest section being the tower dating from 1638. The main part of the church was re-built between 1751 and 1753 although some parts of the walls are of an earlier origin.
