History of a Village: Freckleton

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• 1. A brief history
• 2. First steps
• 3. History detective
• 4. Medieval Freckleton
• 5. Village life and families
• 6. The Marsh
• 7. Churches and schools
• 8. Trade and Industry
• 9. Using oral sources
• 10. Finishing touches
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Finishing touches

The majority of my notes were handwritten in pencil on A4 paper and filed under specific subject headings. Every item was noted with either a record office reference, the details of the publication in which it appeared, or the name of the individual who had provided the information.

I knew at the outset that I had to organise my material very carefully and I chose to keep separate files for each subject and to divide these into six main categories: medieval; property deeds and parish registers; wills and inventories; farming and the grazing marsh; township records (including the poor, health, roads, trade and industry); inns; churches and schools.

In this way I had a clear and easily accessible system so that every piece of information could be easily located. This saved many hours of frustration of the 'now where on earth did I see that' variety.

Seeing the work through to publication was a real challenge, but following publication my sense of personal achievement was very real. The greatest satisfaction, though, was being able share my research and my findings with members of the community in Freckleton.

About the authors

Peter Shakeshaft's initial interest was family history. But he moved on to local history as a result of his interest in the village of Freckleton, Lancashire, where he lived for nine years as a teenager. Like many places, Freckleton was changing fast - old buildings and ways of life were disappearing, and there was a need to record them before they vanished. Peter began to investigate more closely and this resulted in the pubilcation of a large and authoritative book, Freckleton (Carnegie Publishing, 2001).

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Published: 2005-03-03