Poolstock

The Place by the Brook:
A Personal History of Poolstock
BY JOHN UNSWORTH

Page 8 past Forward issue 90

Poolstock is a small compact
village to the south east of
Wigan town centre. Recorded
in 1520 as Pulestoke and 1528
as Pullstoke, the name derives
from the Old English pul stoc,
or place near the brook. If you
look at early nineteenth century
Ordinance Survey maps you can
see the open fields and
farmland dotted with the
occasional dwelling, and skirted
by the River Douglas and
Poolstock Brook.
In his Historia Brittonum, the
ninth century Welsh monk
Nennius, who believed that
Arthur was not just a legend but
a very real person, a king of the
Britons no less, listed 12 sites
where the king had fought
battles to repel the Anglo Saxon
invaders. In his 2004 local
history/travel book author
Charles Nevin speculates that
one of the encounters could
have taken place on the banks of
the Douglas near Poolstock. As
much as I would like to believe
the story there is no hard
historical evidence to support
the claims. Still, there is no
smoke without fire, as the
saying goes.
That apart, however, due to its
geographical location on a north
to south corridor, Wigan has,
over the centuries, experienced
the unwelcome attentions of
various marauding hordes bent
on murder and mayhem - the
Romans, Anglo Saxons (possibly),
Vikings (Scholes comes from the
Viking word skala meaning hut),
Jacobites (twice), Zeppelins, and
St Helens’ fans. In the mid seventeenth century, during the
English Civil War, it was the turn
of Cromwell and his Roundheads

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