Ormskirk is said to be named from a church built by one Orme in former times: one of his name, still left, is wrote upon the font as churchwarden. This belongs to lord Derby; and here is the burial-place of the family, a deep vault filled up to the very church-floor with coffins: some old fragments of alabaster monuments of the family of Stanley; others of the Scaresbricks. The church consists of two buildings at different times; and two steeples, one a spire, the other a large square tower; and both are crowded together in an unseemly manner. From thence we travelled toward Preston, over a boggy, flat and black level, called a Moss. On the right, at a distance, we saw Houghton castle upon a high hill; before us, the vast Lancashire mountains, on the tops of which the clouds hung like fleeces; till we forded the famous _Belisama_, now the Ribel; I suppose, _Rhe bel_, the river Bel. Vide Selden _de diis Syris_. RIBLECHESTER. I went to view this old station: it is prettily seated on a rising knoll upon the river; at some distance all round inclosed with higher ground, well clothed with wood and hedge-rows: beyond which the barren mountains, or Fells, as they generally call them here, from the Cimbric _fala_. The soil hereabouts is gravel with clay and sand by spots. The river Rible is very broad at this place, rapid and sonorous, running over the pebbles, and, what is much to be lamented, over innumerable Roman antiquities; for in this long tract of time it has eaten away a third part of the city. I traced out the old ground-plot, and where the wall and ditch went round it: it lay in length east and west along the north side of the river, upon its brink, 800 foot long, 500 broad: originally, I apprehend, two streets ran along its length, and three crossed them on its breadth. This place has been long famous for old monuments found therein; and some fragments still remaining I had a sight of. At the door of the Red-lion ale-house I saw the base of a pillar, and a most noble shaft, seven foot long, handsomely turned; which was fished out of the river: it is undoubtedly Roman originally, though the base has, I guess, been used as the stump of a later cross, in which this country abounds: there is a _scotia_ and two torus’s at the bottom, though not very elegantly formed; perhaps it was never finished: the whole piece is 2½ foot high, 22 inches in diameter: the _frustum_ of the column lay in the ale-house yard, where the weather, and other accidents, have obliterated an inscription consisting of three or four lines, towards the top: it is 17 inches diameter at top. One corner of this house is a Roman partition-wall, built of pebbles and hard mortar, as usual. This house now is by the brink of the river, leaving only a scanty road between; but within memory a great many houses opposite, and among them the chief inn of the town, were washed away. Farther on, down the river, a great part of an orchard fell down