The High Street

Make sure your volume is on: "Garstang weinds"

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When Gary established the original settlement in pre-Christian Times, the land was carefully arranged and divided into long plots that are known as burgage plots. And these plots ran from the eastern edge of the old streets down to the vicinity of the river Wyre. But periodically, these burgage plots were divided by little snickets or passageways, and in Garstang we have always called these weinds.

Nobody really knows quite how the word came into being or where it came from. Perhaps it is Scottish because a snicket in Scotland is called a wee 'un, a small one. Whether that happened at Garstang, we don't know, but these weinds have all assumed different names over the centuries because the vast majority of the populace could neither read nor write, the weinds assumed the name of the person who lived nearest to the corner of the weind.

And as you head down the high street, you will see these names on the metal plaques and they've changed considerably over time. Some have lasted longer than others. Storey's weind, for example, is largely 19th century, but there are other weinds which have had names which have fallen out to use like Gradwell's weind at the bottom of the High Street because an inkeeper called Richard Gradwell had a pub alongside the weind.

Then of course, after people became educated, and they could read and write, the use of names for weinds began to take second place to , what we have had in the past. Now we have fixed names for our weind. There is Thomas's weind named from a gentleman called Joseph Thomas who was a chemist. We have Storey's weind named after the Storey family who were ironmungers and grocers. We have Carr's weind the Carr family being jewellers and watchmakers and so on and so on. But the weinds themselves and their names betray the people who once lived down the main street in times past.