All the records which reach the Lancashire Record Office are informative, and many are interesting even to the layman, but it is a rare event to receive records which are genuinely dramatic. Such an event did occur this year, however, when the Blackpool Lifeboat Institution serve records were deposited here (DDX 1153) [this article was first published in the Lancashire Record Office annual report for 1977]. The records comprise two short series of books: quarterly reports of expenses and exercises, 1864-1889; and returns of services, being signed copies of the official records of active service, 1864-1953. A few extracts from the service records are printed below, providing vivid glimpses of one of the lesser-known aspects of Blackpool’s history.

So far as is known, records survive for only one Lancashire monastic manor – Lytham. Among the muniments of the Clifton family, who acquired the manor in 1606, are pre -dissolution rolls for the years 1504, 1513/14, 1516-1518, 1422-1524,1526, 1529 and 1532-33. Unfortunately, most are too fragile for examination. Sixteen later rolls survive for the period 1541 – 1614. A very good coverage of the period 1611 – 1712 is given by a composite volume of court records which includes those of four nearby Clifton manors.