FYLDE

borough (district), administrative and historic county of Lancashire, England. It lies on the north bank of the estuary of the River Ribble at the Irish Sea, just east of the resort of Blackpool. Fylde borough is part of the Fylde geographic region, a low coastal plain 18 miles (29 km) wide between the Ribble and Morecambe Bay to the north. It is an area of undulating terrain containing unstratified glacial drift and pockets of marshland, now mostly drained. Extensive sand beaches are found at Lytham St. Anne's, where the Ribble meets the sea. Lytham St. Anne's, built on sand dunes overlooking the sea, is a residential and family resort community with little industry. International golf matches, including the Ryder Cup and the British Open, are sometimes played there. An old windmill and the Jacobean (late 18th-century) Lytham Hall are architectural features. Kirkham, an old market town in the centre of the borough, contains the ruins of an abbey founded in 1125 for Augustinian canons by Walter L'Espec, Henry I's itinerant justice in the north. In the 18th century the agricultural produce of the Fylde geographic region won it the epithet granary of Lancashire; dairy farming and poultry raising predominate in the contemporary borough. There is a major British aerospace industry at Warton, and the only plant in the country producing nuclear fuel elements is located at Salwick. Area 64 square miles (165 square km). Pop. (1998 est.) 75,600.