Standing at the northern end of Poulton-le-Fylde’s Market Place, St Chad’s Church has occupied a central place in the life of the town for more than nine centuries. Its history reaches back to the earliest recorded years of Poulton itself, and although the building seen today has been altered and rebuilt many times, evidence suggests that worship may have taken place on the site before the Norman Conquest. The earliest surviving documentary reference to the church dates from 1094, only eight years after Poulton was recorded as Poltun in the Domesday Book. In that year Roger de Poitou, the powerful…