In the second of a two-part series, Andy Denwood describes how Richard Thomas Gillow of Leighton Hall drained a marshy area now occupied by Leighton Moss for farming purposes

After building a new embankment, a grid pattern of drainage ditches was also dug across the Moss to encourage fresh water to drain towards the sea. But Squire Gillow understood that the sluggish flow of these ditches would need some extra encouragement. A fascinating notebook still held at the Hall, shows plans for water wheels, sluice gates and a pump to drain the Moss.

Squire Gillow enlisted the help of a neighbour with greater experience of steam power – the Quaker businessman Robert Waithman, who owned a flax Mill at Holme. Mr Waithman advised the purchase of a steam pump and Squire Gillow duly ordered one from the Patten Mill Foundry at Preston. It was built and installed at a cost of £943 5s 10d -- about £93,000 at today's prices.

The engine and the pump house that housed it are long since demoIished. But visitors to the Moss today can still see some monuments to those early drainage works. At Crag Foot, on the coastal road from Warton to Silverdale, a square sided chimney perches above the Moss. This served the steam engine installed in 1848. Out on the salt marsh it is also possible to see the sea wall which contemporaries called "Gillow's Bank', now known at Quaker's Stang.

The steam engine, sea embankment and ditches constructed by Squire Gillow and his estate workers all seem to have performed well. The Moss was successfully divided into neat rectangular fields which were given over to the cultivation of cereals and other arable crops. Five farm houses strategically located around the Moss worked the fields. Exceptional tides driven by strong winds would still occasionally overwhelm the fences and spoil crops, but more often than not the harvests were safely gathered in.

The Old Squire lived until the age of 99. Over the course of his long life, he saw agriculture change. Cheap imports from the prairies of North America made English wheat less profitable than earlier in the century. The fields on the Moss were switched to other crops.

But it was further attempts at land reclamation which finally undid his drainage of the Moss. When neighbours launched a scheme to reclaim large tracts of Morecambe Bay, they offered to build a much larger pump to drain their own land along with the Moss. The Old Squire agreed, and the collaboration worked well for many years. But in 1918 the spiralling cost of coal convinced his neighbours that the pump had become too expensive. Despite protests from the Gillow family, the pump stopped, never to go again. Leighton Moss flooded almost immediately. Its farming days were over, and it was returned to the otters and ducks.