Gravestones on the Foreshore at Pilling
by Hugh Sherdley

Half a century ago, lying on the foreshore to the west of Fluke Hall about thirty yards from the sea wall were two large dressed stones, one about six feet long, the other about four feet. Near these two stones was a smaller piece which had obviously been broken off the larger stone. On the face of the large stone and the fragment were vestiges of lettering. The smaller stone had no markings at all.

Traditionally, these two stones marked the grave of a man and his wife, named Dickinson, who lived in a cottage near the shore. They died of plague in the 17th century and were buried in the corner of a field which has since been eroded away by the sea, leaving the stones lying on the beach.

One wild and stormy night a ship was wrecked on the notorious Pilling sands; two sailors from the wreck managed to struggle ashore and were taken in and succoured by the cottager and his wife. A few days later the two sailors died, their ship had been infected with plague. Soon after the death of the seamen, Dickinson and his wife showed signs of the disease and in a few days they too were dead.

Plague was rampant all over England in the first half of the 17th century. Pilling was severely hit in 1650, so much so that the church wardens petitioned the Quarter Sessions
for relief.

The inscription on the stones was recorded by Hewitson in Our Country Churches and Chapels (1872) as:-

He thought the date was either 1650 or 1660.

Unfortunately, the parish registers of Pilling recording burials do not start until 1685, so it is not possible to check on the death of "C DICKONSON MARGRET HIS WIFE". The fact that husband and wife appear to have died at the same time would perhaps indicate plague.

Another story about the stones concerns another Dickinson, one who lived a century and a half later. John Dickinson, or as he was known, "Shee" Dickinson, lived at Sancsice Farm (now derelict), half a mile from the shore. In 1816 he was building a new bar as was recorded by an inscribed stone he built into the east gable, "I D 1816". Wanting a suitable stone for a door lintel, he went to the derelict graveyard near Pilling Hall and took a suitably sized gravestone, which he set up over a doorway in his new ban.

The following morning he found the new doorway and the adjacent wall fallen down, so he re-built it but when it collapsed on three successive nights, he became alarmed and decided some supernatural agency was at work, perhaps the spirit of "C Dickonson" who could have been an ancestor, so he put the two stones in his cart and took them to the shore, where he left them, after which he had no trouble building his barn.

A more prosaic explanation would be that some other member of the Dickinson family objected to the gravestone being used as a lintel and to show their disapproval, they knocked the doorway down each night after "Shee" had built it up.

In the summer of 1981, the writer visited the site and discovered that due to the accretion of sand and growth of salt marsh, the stones were no longer to be seen. After extensive examination with a steel probe, one of the stones was discovered; it had been covered with over a foot of sand and salt marsh. When dug out, it was found to be "C Dickonson's" gravestone. The inscription is now (1983) almost illegible.