On the 8th Nov 1576, midwife Bessie Dunlop, resident of Lynne, in Dalry, was accused of sorcery and witchcraft. She answered her accusers that she received information on prophecies or to the whereabouts of lost goods from a Thomas Reid, a former barony officer in Dalry who died at the battle of Pinkie some 30 years before.

.She said she first met him while walking between her own house and the yard of Monkcastle, and after a discussion he then disappeared through a hole in a wall, apparently too small for a normal person to pass through.

She said she was trained by her “familiar” on how to make and use ointments to heal livestock and people. She was said to have cured and advised various people from poor children to gentry. As a “wise woman” her strange efforts at the time attracted the attention of the law. Her abilities were more akin to today’s current psychics, and with an understanding of medicinal herbs, she was identified in a time of witchcraft hysteria. It resulted in a conviction and the tragic outcome was that she was burnt at the stake at Castle Hill in Edinburgh in 1576. She is also said to have been burnt at Corsehillmuir, just outside Kilwinning.

Alexander Peden (1626-1686) the renowned covenanting minister and remarked as a “profit” (sic) traveled throughout the district. He was said to have preached from Peden’s Point (a rocky outcrop) in a natural auditorium at the head of the Lynn glen.

When the main parish church at the Glebe was resited at the “cross” in 1608 it created around it a “kirktoun” establishing the village of Dalry. By 1700 the inhabitants of Dalry still however, numbered barely 100 and contained only about six dwellings. In the mid 18th century, Dalry was still the only town in the parish.

In 1830 there were about 1,000 inhabitants, and the town consisted of five streets, three of these radiated from the “cross” or centre forming a square.Weekly market were held on Thursdays, and there were fairs in January, May and July.

At that time it was a reasonably large irregular shaped rural parish, centred around on the small town of Dalry. The parish included the small settlements / villages of Blair, Burnside, Drakemire, Southfield and the Den.

During the nineteenth centry it was the home of a local brewer by the name of Thomas Dickenson of Dickenson and Rimmer Brewers in Formby and the beer they made there, called ‘Jacky Water’, is still remembered by the older inhabitants of the village.

Records show that the markets were something of an ancient institution in Formby, licensed from 1325, perhaps even sooner. In 1700s, the main items for sale were pewter, brass, ginerbread and cloth, and on one famous occasion in 1799, a Formby man sold his wife Mary Johnson to my 4xGreat Grandfather Jacob Wright at the Cross Green Market for 15s and a crown jug of punch. See the actual account of this under Parish Records for John Wright.

I have now been able to uncover the full story:-

I have found that James Wright (My 4xGreat Grandfather) , married Margaret Rice in 1765 in St Peter’s Church (C of E) in Formby, they had 6 children, but unfortunately Margaret died in 1781, leaving James with some very young children to look after. I think it is probably about this time and not 1799, that he bought Mary Johnston to look after his children, they lived together and had 5 children, including John (My 3xGreat Grandfather) in 1799, who was christened in St Peter’s and also baptised in Our Lady’s on the same day, 10th April 1799, and it was only then in Apr 1801 that James Wright & Mary Johnston got married in St Peter’s Church, Formby, after Mr Johnston had died, as Mary is described as a widow on the register.

What I have also found out, from the first marriage to Margaret Rice they had a son Peter b1771 who had a daughter Jane b1795, she married Arthur Lamb 1817 in Our Lady of Compassion, Formby and my mother Mary Lamb is descendent from him, so my Father & Mother were Half Cousins 4 x removed. James Wright b1748 is my 4xGreat Grandfather on the Wharton/Harrison side and my 5xGreat Grandfather on the Wright/Lamb side.

The growth of the port was initially slow. However the 18th Century saw a massive expansion. London had problems of the ‘Black Plague’ and the Great Fire; thus, the country needed a new port of discharge for cargoes. Liverpool was the obvious choice especially with its proximity to the Atlantic, and hence the New World. The first commercial wet dock in the world was Canning Dock, built in Liverpool in 1715.

Trade passing through the port of Liverpool was varied, the city often deemed as the ’Gateway to the Empire’. Throughout the 18th Century strong trade ties linked Liverpool with the West Indies, North America, Africa and Europe. By the 19th Century trade with India and China was also important.

The growth of trade and thus jobs in Liverpool brought massive population expansion. Immigrant Irish (in massive numbers due to problems in Ireland such as the potato famine of the 1840s), Welsh, Scottish, Scandinavian, Dutch, Germans and Poles all made Liverpool their home. Many of these people stayed but thousands more passed through the port on their way to the New World. Trading links with China also brought a large Chinese Community to the city. In fact Liverpool has the oldest ‘China Town’ in Europe.

Fortunes were made transporting people to the Americas and beyond. Shipping companies such as Cunard and White Star Line set up to transport these people. This exodus through Liverpool continued from the 18th Century until about the 1950s. The history of Liverpool is intrinsically linked to the fortunes of the city as a port. The port itself being reliant on world trading conditions. The vast wealth of the ship owners and merchants of Liverpool made the city very much one of contrasts. The wealthy lived in grand houses (still apparent in the Georgian houses of Toxteth and Sefton Park) and built many of the architecturally magnificent buildings throughout the city. However, there was also massive squalor in the slums. Overcrowding, malnutrition, filth and disease were commonplace, as they were in all cities of Victorian Britain.