of two basins, several plates and some other items that Townley thought had religious uses. The finds were thought to have survived so well because they were covered in sand. Post-Roman Little is known about post Roman Ribchester although the presence of St Wilfrid's Church indicates that it retained some significance. When Henry VIII's antiquary visited Ribchester in the 1540s he described it thus: "Ribchestre ... hath been an auncient towne. Great squarid stones, voultes and antique coynes be found there". When, a short while later, William Camden, author of Britannia (1586), visited the village, he recorded the saying that starts this section. That the site of the Roman fort remained the focus of the village is indicated by the later building of St Wilfrid's Church very nearly over the Principia or headquarters area of the Roman camp. The church's website provides a detailed history of both St Wilfrid's and St Saviour's Church, which stands in the nearby settlement of Stydd and which is perhaps a remnant of a Knights Templar or Knights Hospitallers establishment. In the 17th and 18th centuries the village became, like many in East Lancashire, a centre for cotton weaving. Initially in the homes of the weavers and latterly in two mills (Bee Mill and Corporation Mill) built on Preston Road on the northern edge of the village. In 1838, William Howitt published his Rural Life of England, in which he described conditions in the weaving districts of East Lancashire. "Everywhere extend wild, naked hills, in many places totally un-reclaimed, in others enclosed, but exhibiting all the signs of neglected spiritless husbandry ... Over these naked and desolate hills are scattered to their very tops, in all directions, the habitations of a swarming population of weavers ... In Ribchester our chaise was pursued by swarms of [these] wooden-shod lads like swarms of flies and were only beaten off for a moment to close in upon you again, and their sisters showed equally the extravagance of rudeness in which they were suffered to grow up, by running out of the houses as we passed and poking mops and brushes at the horses heads. No one attempted to restrain or rebuke them; yet no one of the adult population offered you the least insult; and if you asked the way, gave you the most ready directions, and if you went into their houses, treated you with perfect civility