Thurnham, ENG - Postcode - LA2 0AS

Description of Thurnham, Lancashire

Located in the English county of Lancashire, Thurnham is the name of a civil parish. It includes the communities of Conder Green, Glasson Dock, Lower Thurnham, and Upper Thurnham, and it is located on the city's southern side of the River Lune estuary. According to the 2000 Census, there were 595 people living in the parish; the 2011 Census found 651.

The confluence of the Conder and the Lune is located at Thurnham. The parish is best accessed by the A588, a major thoroughfare. The parish was once served by the Glasson Dock Branch of the London and North Western Railway, which featured stops in Conder Green, Glasson Dock, and a private halt at Ashton Hall. Thurnham Hall, a manor house built in the 17th century that is now a resort hotel, is located to the east of the settlement.

Scattered around five miles south of Lancaster, the residents of Thurnham form a tiny village predominantly comprised of farming families. The Dalton family, former residents of Thurnham Hall, held the manor of Thurnham. Their ancestor, St. Thomas More, was a wealthy landowner in Lancashire, and his descendants carried on the family name. Miss Alzira Eloise Dalton, the last member of the family, passed away in 1983. She had sold the Hall and moved into the cottage immediately inside the gates that bore the family crest. The historic Thurnham Hall is currently being renovated into a timeshare community.

Only the chapter house of the Abbey of St. Mary of the Marsh in Cockersand survives among the ruins that now form Abbey Farm. Although Hugh Garth established a hermitage on the site in 1180, it was converted into a Leicester Abbey hospital in the 13th century, making this building an unusual example of octagonal form in a Premonstratensian home. The chapter house has a gorgeous red sandstone vaulted ceiling. Crook Farm, which is located directly across from Sunderland Point, features windows and entrances salvaged from the abbey in both the main house and the shippon. The name "Chapel Hill" has been given to the surrounding area, which makes one wonder if a chapel of convenience formerly stood there. The number of people who engage in salmon fishing with heave, drift, and whammel nets is decreasing annually.

One of the few stretches of unspoiled coastline in Lancashire, the estuary and salt marshes are home to a wide variety of wildlife, including wading birds, oyster catchers, cormorants, and sheld ducks. Wildflowers abound along the seawalls, but Spartina grass is taking over the marshes, killing off the mud flats that the wading birds rely on for food.

Changing weather patterns have forced farmers to switch from hay to silage. The most common types of farming are dairy and sheep. Some of the hawthorn hedges that border the fields are so blown over that they are virtually horizontal.