On this day … 28 January 1716

Five Jacobites were hanged on Gallows Hill in Preston. They were Richard Shuttleworth, of Preston, and four others. Shuttleworth’s head was cut off and fixed on the town hall. Seven more rebels were executed two weeks later, and four at Garstang.

According to David Hunt in his History of Preston, the executioners were paid £60 for their work in Lancashire. He adds the following extract from the Sheriff’s accounts, ‘January 27th: Erecting gallows and paid for materialls, hurdle, fire, cart etc. in executing Shuttleworth and 4 more at Preston and setting up his head etc £12. 0s. 4d.’

English Martyrs Church on Garstang Road now stands on what was Gallows Hill. Hewitson in his History of Preston records that when the road from Preston to Lancaster was being improved in 1817, the hill was cut through to reduce the gradient, and workmen uncovered two coffins containing headless corpses. These were probably the bodies of Jacobite rebels executed on the spot. They would have been among the more than 1,500 rebels, 1,088 Scots and 464 English, who had taken Preston in 1715 and then surrendered when the town was retaken by Government forces.

After the surrender, officers and gentlemen were detained in inns and other properties around the town. Ordinary soldiers, according to Hewitson, were herded into the parish church where they were held for a month, living on bread and water, and ‘keeping themselves warm with breeches and hose made out of material which they ripped from the seats and linings of pews’.

The last reminder of the executions of three hundred years ago are Kenmure Place and Derwentwater Place, which now stand on what was Gallows Hill. They are named for Viscount Kenmure and the Earl of Derwentwater, leaders of the Jacobite Rebellion. They were not among those executed there. Instead, they were taken to London to be tried by their peers in the House of Lords, and afterwards beheaded.

One source for this item is David Hunt’s A History of Preston, which sadly is not available on line, although there are copies at the Harris Library in Preston. A mark of its popularity is that it was at one time, according to David, the book most frequently stolen from the Harris. The other source is Hewitson’s History of Preston.