General Inferences
The coast formerly projected much farther to seaward. This is not a matter of opinion, but a demonstrable fact. The evidence on which the statement is founded may be briefly given thus:
(a) The showing of ancient maps.
(b) The testamony of historic records.
(c) The complete destruction of a racecourse.
(d) A public road had been broken up and rendered useless.
(e) A burial-place had been carried away.
(f) It had been found necessary to build a large embankment against the sea.
(g) Notwithstanding this, its inroads upon the land had taken place as late as the 1860's.
The following facts may be stated in corroboration:
(a) To seaward of the present cultivated land and sandhills were found the remains, not of one, but of several forests, of different growths, with their roots embedded in the soil in which they flourished.
(b) Traces of cultivation existed, under the mounds of sand that was present at the time, to the very margin of the tide; proving that even cultivation extended to seaward of the present water line.
(c)The remains of an ancient house like a Hall or proprietory Mansion existed until the 1790's.
(d) An ancient well, or spring of fresh water, arose far within the area covered by the tide; and tradition asserted that it was formerly covered by a brick archway, and that it was last used by the attendants on the lighthouse that had been obliterated.
The oldest Roman articles were found in the upper stratum of the old forest turf, among the trunks and roots of trees; but their range was extremely limited, and they were found chiefly to the east of Dove Point. From this it is evident that the earliest inhabitants of Meols established themselves on the side next to the lighthouse. The prehistoric or purely British objects were so few in number that this could never have been a British station; though, no doubt, wandering tribes of several kinds passed over it in primitive times.
The Roman objects, though among the oldest, were still so numerous as to be consistent only with the theory that there was an important station there. When the land projected further out, it gave them a full view of a long range of coast. It was notedthat a tradition respecting Dunwich, that the tailors there could see the ships entering Yarmouth bay. So the Roman centurion may have stood upon the coast of ancient Meols, and seen the galleys of his countrymen sail down the Dee to Chester. Turning to the west, they passed along the Cambrian coast; or to the east, round Hilbre island, through what was known locally as Heye-pol, and past his own point of observation. There appears to have been a high sandy promontory, of which the Dove Spit existed, being deminished by the wind and tide.
On this promontory ancient Meols was no doubt situated; and the unsubstatial materials of which it was composed, like the hill of Dunwich, presented facilities for its destruction. The inhabitants must have realized the effects of building their homes upon sand. This elevation of whatever height appears to have been covered with trees, in the shelter of which they wandered, and near which their cottages were placed. And as we find, in various parts of England, that the ancient Roman roads were used by the Saxons, and in many instances continued to form the leading lines of communication to our own times, so the village, the seashore, the woodland paths, the burying- ground etc: were used not only by successive generations, but by successive peoples. This accounts for the finding of objects differing in nationality as well as in date, within the narrow limits of investigation.
But the more modern objects were found further westward, certain Saxon examples, chiefly coins, being found nearly a mile to the west, and on clay; thus showing a gradual change in residence in the direction of the Dee, owing no doubt to such physical causes as those we are considering. T he articles that belong more strictly to modern historical times, for example, to the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries - were found nearer to the village of Hoylake, or still further removed from the original Roman position. Thus, keeping to seaward of the present water line, we can trace the course of habitation from the eastern side of Dove point to the village of Hoylake.
The island of Hilbre (Hilbury, Ilbre, or Helburgh) possesses an interest of its own. It was a Saxon cell of monks of the Benedictine order; and the access to it was usually by Chester. both in going and returning. In later times it held communication by ship across the Dee, or over the Constable's sands. Several Saxon objects have been found at or near it, and a few Roman objects; but they were in some degree unconnected with the village of Meols, and with the objects there.
The Danes were familiar with this part of the country, (as recently as 2001 DNA has been found in several occupants which ancestry originated from the Danes) and probably ravaged its coasts, as they did in other parts of England; but from the manner in which Scandinavian and Saxon local names are blended on the estuary of the Dee, and indeed all along the coast of Lancashire and Cheshire, it is clear that they formed peaceful settlements among the people, and excercised productive industry.
In the parish of West Kirby, Liverpool, an unusual number of enclosed fields were found, and of course agriculture, in a progressive state, even in that unpromising situation. The incursion of the Danes, however, could not have effected much injury; for we find that most of the relics belong to dates subsequent to that period; and was sometimes impossible to say when an object belonged to the Saxon members of the great continental family, and when to the Danish members, although as of recent finds, and I refer mainly to the three wire plaited gold finger-ring I found was said to be of Viking in origin proving that the style of manufacture was peculiar to that race.
At the time of the Domesday Survey, Great Meols appears to have been recently sanded up; and it possessed then only about thirty acres of arable land, in connection with which five families were mentioned. One of these was a radman (roadster or carrier); two others were labourers; and the remaining two were tenants paying in kind, or furnishing animal food for the table of the proprietor. It would certainly appear as if the inhabitants had just shifted westward, in the direction of Little Meols; for there was there twice as much land available for cultivation, and the labourers and the tenants were three and three respectively.
The neat-herds of Wallasey, who exercised their vocation in the days of the Conquerer, had their representatives up to 1860; but the radman with his packhorse no longer plunged through the sandy roads of Caldy, Thurstaston, and Heswell, to the region of the 'civilisation' of Chester. His craft had been superseded by the proprietors of well-appointed omnibuses, by farmers with their carts, and by one or two carriers. At one time history shows that in the first of Henry, the Dee was a well frequented river; that numerous ships lay at its mouth, now called the Bar, and that the passage across to Basingwerk Abbey, near modern Holywell, North Wales, was at that time a `royal road'.
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