On this day … 21 July 1866

An advertisement in the Preston Chronicle announced the formation of a Preston Association for the Protection of the Rights of Ancient Footpaths. This was not the first such organisation established in Preston, as was revealed when the blocking of a right of way through Winckley Square produced angry letters to the paper. In one of them, in January 1864, the correspondent wrote:

‘There was, a few years since, a Public Footpaths Association established in Preston. It should have been resuscitated, if only for the purpose of getting the old road opened through the square.’

Earlier in the letter, the writer outlined the problem, complaining about the privilege the Winckley Square ‘aristocrats’ enjoyed:

‘I see that Winckley Square is being re-inclosed, now that the sewerage works are completed, and the public are to be still longer deprived of the road through it, to which they have an undoubted right. How is this! The Corporation, as trustees for the public, ought to have seen that no rights were infringed upon; and the impression is abroad that had the right of road in question existed in some less aristocratic part of the town, there would have been more zeal shown in asserting what was due to the inhabitants.’

The denial of access had been angering correspondents for some time, as earlier letters to the paper show:

‘It has been said that there should be a public movement in favour of the restoration to the public of their old right of way through Winckley Square, but I cannot imagine that any such movement is necessary. The matter has been brought before the notice of the public by correspondents in your journal, and it is for the members of the Corporation to do their duty in the matter.

‘As a rule, the Corporation are very particular about infringements; a man may not now put out a bay window, even within his own rails, unless he first gets the sanction of the Corporation to the alteration. Let our representatives show that they are impartial, and that they are as chary of large infringements by the rich as of small infringements by tradespeople.’

Another correspondent looked to the example of the Manchester Ancient Footpaths Association for support:

‘In the Manchester Guardian of this morning, I see a report of the proceedings of the Manchester Ancient Footpaths Association, in which the following passage occurs:

‘Mr. Ogle, of Orchard Mill, Croston, inquired by letter of the secretary how long a footpath must be closed before it could be entirely done away with. The secretary replied that the public could make use of it until it had been stopped by an order of the Court of Quarter Sessions.

‘This reply exactly meets the case of the old road through Winckley Square. That footpath was never “stopped by an order of the Court of Quarter Sessions,” and, therefore, still legally exists. It is to be hoped some attempt will be made not to allow an undoubted right to be longer infringed.’

Some years earlier, another correspondent recalled, an ‘ancient footway’ from Ribblesdale Place to Avenham had been closed, that it taken many years to get it reopened, and that the Winckley Square right of way should be similarly restored:

‘I was struck by the great public advantage it would be if there were a road across the square, say for pedestrians only, in a direct line from Cross Street to Garden Street. Mentioning my idea to an old townsman, he informed me, and I have since had the information corroborated by more than one elderly Prestonian, that there is a public right of way across the square, that that right was never waived or surrendered, and that the enclosure of the old walk within a private garden is a usurpation.

‘If this be so, some steps should be taken to assert the rights of the public. It needs no Prestonian to be very old to remember the stoppage of the ancient footway from Ribblesdale Place to Avenham fields, and how, after many years of deprivation, the inhabitants had at last the road restored to them. Such, I presume, would be the case with Winckley Square. If there is no Ancient Footpaths Society in Preston, I think there ought to be; we should not allow the privileges of the people to be frittered away.’

The right of way mentioned would have gone from the Sir Robert Peel statue facing Cross Street across the square to Garden Street (see plan). It was never restored.