In several places we find that movable stocks were in use, which could
be brought out whenever occasion required. A set of these exists at
Garstang, Lancashire. The quotation already given from _King Lear,_
"Fetch forth the stocks," seems to imply that in Shakespeare's time
they were movable. Beverley stocks were movable, and in _Notes and
Queries_ we find an account of a mob at Shrewsbury dragging around the
town in the stocks an incorrigible rogue one Samuel Tisdale in the
year 1851.

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