| CURATES AND VICARS OF THORNTON. | ||
|---|---|---|
| Date of Institution. | Name. | Cause of vacancy. |
| 1835 | David H. Leighton | |
| 1837 | Edward Thurtell | Resignation of D. H. Leighton |
| 1841 | St. Vincent Beechey, M.A. | ” ” E. Thurtell |
| 1846 | Robert W. Russell | ” ” St. V. Beechey |
| 1853 | Isaac Durant, M.A. | ” ” W. Russell |
| 1869 | Samuel Clark | ” ” I. Durrant |
| 1870 | Thomas Meadows, M.A. | ” ” S. Clark |
Within the building there is a small gallery at the west end, and the private pews are arranged in two rows, one being placed along each side of the body of the church, whilst the central portion is filled with open benches, or forms, free to all worshippers. A marble tablet “To the memory of Jacob Morris, a faithful warden for 20 years, who died Oct., 1871,” is fixed against the south wall, and over the mantel-piece in the vestry is a white-lettered black board stating that—“This Church was erected in the year 1835, containing 323 sittings; and, in consequence of a grant from the Incorporated Society for promoting the enlargement, building, and repairing of churches and chapels, 193 of that number are hereby declared to be free and unappropriated for ever.—David Hilcock Leighton, minister; James Smith and Richard Wright, churchwardens.” On the font is the following inscription:—“Presented to Thornton Church by Elizabeth Nutter, of Rough Hall, Accrington, July 13th, 1874.”
Mr. James Baines, of Poulton, by will dated 6th of January, 1717, devised to Peter Woodhouse, of Thornton, and six others, and their heirs, the school-house lately erected by him on Thornton Marsh, and the land whereon it stood, to be used for ever as a free school for the children of the township; in addition he bequeathed to the same trustees several closes in Carleton, called the Far Hall Field, the Middle Hall Field, and the Vicar’s Hey, amounting to about twenty-one acres, to the intent, that the annual revenue therefrom, less 10s. to be expended each year in a dinner for the trustees, should be devoted to the payment of a suitable master. In 1806, Richard Gaskell, the sole surviving trustee, conveyed by indenture to John Silcock, John Hull, Thomas Barton, of Thornton, Charles Woodhouse of Great Carleton, Bickerstaff Hull, and Thomas Hull, and the said Richard Gaskell, their heirs and assigns, the premises above-mentioned, for the purposes set forth in the will of the founder.[97] A further endowment of £500 was left by Mr. Simpson, with a portion of which farm buildings have been erected on the school estate. The school-house is situated on the east side of Cleveleys Station, and consists of a small single-storey building, having two windows and a central doorway in front. To the west end is attached a two-storey teacher’s residence. The double erection was built some years ago, by subscription amongst the inhabitants, on the site of the original fabric at a cost of rather more than £100. The master is elected and, when necessary, dismissed by the trustees, who forego their claim on the 10s. left for an annual dinner. In 1867 the number of scholars amounted to eighty-eight, fifty-nine of whom were boys, and twenty-nine girls, presenting about an average attendance since that date.
The small village of Thornton comprises only a limited cluster of dwellings and the old windmill. The Wesleyan Methodists had established a place of worship in the township as early as 1812, and about ten years later the Society of Friends opened a meeting-house here.
The arable land of Rossall, in Thornton township, or Rushale, as it was written, is estimated in the Domesday volume at two carucates. At that time Rossall was included amongst the princely possessions of the Norman baron, Roger de Poictou, after whose banishment it passed, by gift of Richard I., to Theobold Walter, and again reverted to the crown in 1206, on his demise. King John, at the instigation of Ranulph de Blundeville, earl of Chester and Lincoln, presented the grange of Rossall to the Staffordshire convent of Deulacres, a monastic house founded by that nobleman; and in 1220-1 Henry III. issued a writ to the sheriff of this county, directing him to institute inquiries by discreet and lawful men, into the extent of several specified places, one of which was the pasture of Rossall, recently, “granted by my father, King John, to the abbot of Deulacres.”[98] In 1227-8 a deed was drawn up between Henry III. and the abbot whereby the grange was conveyed, or confirmed, to the latter[99]; and twenty years subsequently a fresh charter appears to have been framed and to have received the royal signature, for in the following reign of Edward I., when that monarch laid claim to the land as a descendant of King John, the head of the Staffordshire convent produced a document of 31 Henry III. (1247), at the trial, granting “to God, the church of St. Mary, and the abbot of Deulacres and his successors for ever, the manor of Rossall with its appurtenances and with the wreck of the sea.”[100] Sir Robert de Lathum, Sir Robert de Holaund, Sir John de Burun, Sir Roger de Burton, Sir John de Cornwall, Sir John de Elyas, and Sir Alan de Penyngton, knights; Alan de Storeys, Robert de Eccleston, William du Lee, Hugh de Clyderhou, and Roger de Middleton, esquires, who composed the jury in the above suit, decided in favour of the abbot’s title, but at the request of the king’s attorney, judgment was arrested, and it was pleaded on behalf of the regal claimant that the abbot’s allegations seemed to imply that the manor of Rossall was formerly held by the monks of Deulacres in bailiwick of Kings, John and Henry; that thirty years at least of the reign of Henry had elapsed before the predecessors of the present abbot held any fee or free tenement in the manor, which was worth 100 marks per annum; and that this rent had been in arrears during the whole of the time; wherefore the king’s attorney demanded that the accumulation of these arrears, amounting to 3,000 marks, or £2,000, should be paid by the abbey to Edward I. The jury stated in their verdict that the manor had been held by the abbot’s predecessors as pleaded by the king’s attorney, but that during the last seven years of King John, and the first twenty-four years of Henry III., the manor was only worth 30 marks per annum, and in the remaining six years before the date of the charter put in as evidence by the abbot in the first trial, they valued the manor at 40 marks per annum, on which scales the abbey of Deulacres was condemned to pay the accumulated arrearages. In 1539, during the reign of Henry VIII., the grange was valued in the Compotus of the king’s ministers at £13 6s. 3d. per annum.
The site of the original Hall has long since been washed away by the waves, but in earlier years, before the sea had made such encroachments on the land, the foundations of red sandstone and the remnant of an old ivied wall were visible near the edge of the cliff, all being sufficiently traceable to indicate that the mansion had been one of no mean dimensions. A coat of arms of the Fleetwood family, rudely engraven on a flat stone, some ornamental pinnacles, and other relics of the ancient edifice, have also been discovered at different times. Numerous foundations of large buildings were once scattered about the sandy soil of the grange, but most of them were removed eighty years since as impediments to the course of the plough. In a plot of ground, known by the title of “Churchyard field,” remains of a structure, running east and west, in length thirty and in breadth twelve yards, were taken up about half a century or more ago by a farmer named John Ball, who whilst removing them came upon some human bones. The fabric once standing there was conjectured to have been a chapel or oratory, and the bones to have been those of priests or others buried within its precincts. Harrison, in describing the course of the Wyre, says “that at the Chapell of Allhallowes tenne myles from Garstone it goeth into the sea,” and Mr. Thornber suggests, in his History of Blackpool and Neighbourhood, that the foundations disturbed by Mr. Ball may have been the remains of the oratory alluded to by the ancient topographer; but whilst admitting that the character of the relics discovered points to there having been at one time a religious edifice on the site, we cannot think that its claims to be the missing chapel are nearly so great as those of Bispham, which is now known, by an inscription on an old communion goblet, to have been actually dedicated to All-Hallows, or at least to have been commonly designated by that name in the seventeenth century.
The Allens appear to have held Rossall on lease from the abbot of Deulacres about a century after the dispute between that monastery and Edward I. had been decided, for in 1397, during the reign of Richard II., the name of “Allen of Ross-hall” was entered in the list of donors to the fraternities of the Preston Guild of that year. George Allen, of Brookhouse, Staffordshire, who held Rossall at the date of the Reformation, by virtue of a long lease granted to his ancestors by an abbot of Deulacres, is the earliest of this family to whom these tenants of the grange can be traced genealogically. The widow and daughters of the grandson of George Allen were ejected from Rossall in 1583, before the expiration of their lease, and despoiled of valuable documents and property by Edmund Fleetwood, whose father had purchased the reversion from Henry VIII., at the time of the dissolution of monasteries. On that occasion a neighbour, Anion, seized and appropriated £500 belonging to the Allens on pretence of remitting it to Dr. William Allen, at Rheims. Mrs. Allen made an attempt to recover possession of the grange, and a trial for that purpose took place at Manchester, but her case broke down through inability to produce the original deeds and papers, all of which had been either stolen or destroyed when the Hall was plundered during the ejection.[101] The estate, or grange, of Rossall, remained in the hands of the Fleetwoods until the death of Edward Fleetwood, when it passed to Roger Hesketh, of North Meols, who married Margaret, the only child and heiress of that gentleman in 1733.[102] The Heskeths, of Rossall, were descended from the Heskeths of Rufford, through Hugh Hesketh, an offspring of Sir Thomas Hesketh, of Rufford. Hugh Hesketh married the eldest daughter and co-heiress of Barneby Kytichene, or Kitchen, and thus acquired a moiety of the manor of North Meols. At the decease of Hugh Hesketh, in 1625, the lands of North Meols descended to his son, Thomas Hesketh, then 56 years of age, whose son and heir, Robert Hesketh, was already married to the daughter of—Formby, of Formby. The only child of Robert Hesketh was the Roger Hesketh, mentioned above, who also held Tulketh Hall and estate. The Heskeths continued to reside at Rossall until the lifetime of the late Sir Peter Hesketh Fleetwood, bart.; and under their proprietorship, at an early period, or in the latest years of their predecessors, the ancient Hall was pulled or washed down and another mansion erected more removed from the shore.
In 1843 the design of establishing a school for the education of the sons of clergymen and other gentlemen, under the direct superintendence of the Church of England, but at a less cost than incurred at the public schools then in existence, was first promulgated by the Rev. St. Vincent Beechey, incumbent of Thornton and Fleetwood; and mainly through the exertions of that gentleman a provisional committee for arranging details and furthering the object in view, was formed in the first month of the ensuing year. This committee consisted, amongst others, of the Rev. J. Owen Parr, vicar of Preston, chairman; the Revs. Charles Hesketh, vicar of North Meols; William Hornby, vicar of St. Michael’s-on-Wyre; John Hull, vicar of Poulton; R. B. Robinson, incumbent of Lytham; St. Vincent Beechey, incumbent of Thornton and Fleetwood, hon. sec. pro. tem.; and Messrs. Thomas Clifton, of Lytham Hall; Daniel Elletson, of Parrox Hall, and T. R. Wilson-ffrance, of Rawcliffe Hall. At their first meeting it was decided that the management of the school should be placed in the hands of a committee of twenty-four of the principal clergy and laity in the neighbourhood, of whom fourteen should be clergymen and ten laymen, with power to fill up vacancies; that the bishop of the diocese should always be the visitor; that the provisional committee should be the first members of the council, with which should rest the appointment of the principal, who must be in holy orders, at such a liberal salary as would insure the services of one eminently qualified for so important a post; that the council should have power to dismiss the principal; that the internal management, subject to certain regulations, should be committed to the principal, who should have the appointment and dismissal of all the inferior or subordinate masters; and that the system of education should resemble that in the school connected with King’s College, London, and in Marlborough school, consisting of systematic religious instruction, sacred literature, classics, mathematics, modern languages, drawing, music, etc.
With regard to the admission of pupils it was resolved that the school should consist of not less than two hundred boys; that no child should be admitted under eight years of age; that the mode of admission should be by annual payment, nomination, or insurance; that any pupil should be admitted on the payment, half-yearly in advance, of £50 per annum for the sons of laymen, and £40 for the sons of clergymen; that nominations might be procured, at the first opening of the school, in order to raise the required capital, whereby pupils could be admitted on the yearly payment of £40 for the sons of laymen, and £30 for the sons and wards of clergymen; that a donation of £25, or the holding of two £25 shares, fully paid up, should entitle the donor or holder, to one nomination, and a donation of £50, or the holding of four shares of £25 each, should constitute the donor, or holder, a life-governor, entitled to have always one pupil in the school on his nomination; that the shares should be limited to an annual interest of 5 per cent., and be paid off as soon as possible, the return of such capital, however, not to destroy the right of nomination during the life of a governor; that clergymen should be able to provide for the admission of their children to the school at a reduced charge of £25 per annum, by paying, on the principle of life-insurance, small sums for several years previous to, or one large sum at, the date of entry of each child into the establishment, such payments to be regulated according to certain tables, and, of course, forfeited in case the child died.