The Blogging from A to Z Challenge is to post everyday (except Sunday) in the month of April 2018 starting with the letter A and going all the way to Z. The theme I chose is...
My Family Tree Places.
STALMINE, UK
Stalmine, Poulton-le Fylde, Lancashire, England is home to my Singleton ancestors.
James Singleton, my 3x great uncle, occupied Grange Farm in Stalmine.
Ploughing Matches were events sponsored by local Ploughing Associations and the entrants ploughed part of a field and points were awarded for straightness and neatness of rows. In 1871 the annual Stalmine Ploughing Association ploughing match was held on a field adjoining Grange Farm, occupied by James Singleton.
This image from Australia is typical of a ploughing match in England.
James was mentioned as a breeder in the Shire Horse Stud Book of 1893, for a horse he bred in 1875.
The Great Depression of British Agriculture occurred about 1873 to 1896. It was caused by cheap grain prices following the American Homestead Act, which opened the prairies to cultivation, plus cheap transportation with the rise in steamships. James tried to hang on to his farm, but in the end he had to file for bankruptcy in 1880.
St James Church served both Stalmine and Preesall, where other of my Singletons lived, until Preesall got it's own church in 1899. The churchyard was consecrated in 1236 and although it is quite small, there is an estimated 3000 people were buried there between 1583 and 1724.
Surprisingly, many more burials took place in the St James graveyard until 1899. The graveyard being full of "higgledy-piggledy" gravestones it was hard to keep it tidy and in 1973 the decision was made to remove and clean the gravestones and mount them on the new south wall.
Some of my Singletons were baptized, married and buried here.
Hmm, it looks like hosting a ploughing match would be a good way for a farmer to get his fields plowed without doing the work himself!
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