On this day … 12 August 1848

The Preston Guardian revealed plans to open up a new road from Church Street to the north: what is now Lancaster Road but was then Molyneux Square and the New Shambles, entered through an archway off Church Street.

The land was owned by the Earl of Derby and the project formed a grand design for an elegant street of large town houses, shops and inns, although the elegance of the scene was possibly marred by the retention of the butchers’ shambles.

Work progressed rapidly and the road was opened the following year, with new buildings soon erected, including the Stanley Buildings and Stanley Arms (named for the Stanleys, the family name of the Earl of Derby).

The Earl of Derby’s project was the area’s second redevelopment. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Molyneux family (who gave their name to the square) were the owners of the land, then going by the inelegant name of Arram’s Backside. It was Thomas Molyneux, a Whig MP for Preston, who developed the plot.

He squeezed a way through the long line of properties on the north side of Church Street into the open ground behind, where he built the row of butcher’s shops known as the New Shambles, and further back a number of town houses in Molyneux Square. Well into the nineteenth century, above the archway entrance from Church Street was a stone tablet surmounted by the Molyneux arms, and bearing the following inscription: ‘These shambles were built Anno. Dom. 1715, by Thos. Molyneux, Esq. second son of Sir Jno. Molyneux, Bart. of Teversal, in ye county of Nottingham.’

Whittle, in his history of Preston, described the various means of access, all narrow, to the Molyneuxs’ new development as follows:

‘There are six entrances into these Shambles, for the accommodation of the towns people. First, the main entrance out of Church-street; second, the one out of Lord-street, by the Bull and Butcher; third, another coming out of Lord-street, by the Butcher’s Arms, commonly called “Ward’s end;” together with three out of the Market-place, viz.—Through the Gin-bow-entry, the Strait Shambles, and up Mrs. Rigby’s yard, commonly called the Blue Anchor yard.’

The earlier owners of the land had been the Preston family, who arrived in Preston, probably towards the end of the twelfth century, and took their name from their adopted town. The main branch of the family moved to Ireland in the fourteenth century, but retained much land in Preston.

Sir John Molyneux, the father of Thomas, bought the Preston family estate, including Arram’s Backside, in the 1680s. At the time he was living in one of the largest of the new houses on the south side of Fishergate.

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Sources
Whittle’s History of Preston
The Molyneuxs and the Prestons