The Rochdale stocks remain, but they are now in the churchyard, having been removed from the place where the markets were formerly held at Church Stile.  When these kind of objects have once disappeared it is rarely that they are ever restored.  However, at West Derby this unusual event has occurred, and five years ago the restoration was made.  It appears that in the village there was an ancient pound or pinfold which had degenerated into an unsightly dust-heap, and the old stocks had passed into private hands.  The inhabitants resolved to turn the untidy corner into a garden, and the lady gave back the stocks to the village.  An inscription records:  “To commemorate the long and happy reign of Queen Victoria and the coronation of King Edward VII, the site of the ancient pound of the Dukes of Lancaster and other lords of the manor of West Derby was enclosed and planted, and the village stocks set therein.  Easter, 1904.”

This inscription records another item of vanishing England.  Before the Inclosure Acts at the beginning of the last century there were in all parts of the country large stretches of unfenced land, and cattle often strayed far from their homes and presumed to graze on the open common lands of other villages.  Each village had its pound-keeper, who, when he saw these estrays, as the lawyers term the valuable animals that were found wandering in any manor or lordship, immediately drove them into the pound.  If the owner claimed them, he had certain fees to pay to the pound-keeper and the cost of the keep.  If they were not claimed they became the property of the lord of the manor, but it was required that they should be proclaimed in the church and two market towns next adjoining the place where they were found, and a year and a day must have elapsed before they became the actual property of the lord.  The possession of a pound was a sign of dignity for the village.  Now that commons have been enclosed and waste lands reclaimed, stray cattle no longer cause excitement in the village, the pound-keeper has gone, and too often the pound itself has disappeared.  We had one in our village twenty years ago, but suddenly, before he could be remonstrated with, an estate agent, not caring for the trouble and cost of keeping it in repair, cleared it away, and its place knows it no more.  In very many other villages similar happenings have occurred.  Sometimes the old pound has been utilized by road surveyors as a convenient place for storing gravel for mending roads, and its original purpose is forgotten.

It would be a pleasant task to go through the towns and villages of England to discover and to describe traces of these primitive implements of torture, but such a record would require a volume instead of a single chapter.  In Berkshire we have several left to us.  There is a very complete set at Wallingford, pillory, stocks, and whipping-post, now stored in the museum belonging to Miss Hedges in the castle, but in western Berkshire they have nearly all disappeared.  The last pair of stocks that I can remember stood at the entrance to the town of Wantage.  They have only disappeared within the last few years.  The whipping-post still exists at the old Town Hall at Faringdon, the staples being affixed to the side of the ancient “lock-up,” known as the Black Hole.