On this day … 1 September 1838

The Preston Chronicle carried a report of a council meeting that safeguarded the land on which the magnificent terraces leading down to the Ribble from Avenham Walk were built. It was a close call, for the whole area very nearly fell into the hands of housing developers.

The owner of the land at that time was a Mr Tomlinson, one of the two Tomlinson brothers who owned the nearby Frenchwood Tannery and who went on to buy a large swathe of land in the Plungington area.

Mr Tomlinson had offered to sell the land to the council for 1½ pence a yard, and a council committee was all in favour of the purchase. It had now come to the full council for ratification, and the mayor was in no doubt that Mr Tomlinson’s offer should be accepted.

He thought ‘it extremely desirable that the prospect from Avenham Walk should be preserved, which could not be done except the land in question was purchased.

Mr Tomlinson told the council that he had had applications from people keen to build houses there who were willing to pay handsomely for the plots. He himself had paid three pence a yard for the land:

‘He could if he thought proper sell it at a higher price than that at which it was offered to the corporation, but as a townsman he was anxious to waive private interest, and to preserve to a public place of resort, those advantages which rendered it valuable and useful to the town – (Cheers)’

It was lucky that his offer was accepted, for twelve months earlier a similar offer had been rejected by a considerable majority of the council. And it was not unopposed this time, for a Councillor Smith raised objections to the purchase.

He argued that buying the land was only the first, and least expensive, part of the project. Completing the project would cost £1,500, and that was far too much to pay for a ‘prospect’ that was likely to spoiled when the projected railway lines were built across the Ribble.

Fortunately, this time Councillor Smith was in a minority of one and the rest of the councillors voted for the purchase, and a few years later the terraces that now stretch down from the Walk to the Ribble were constructed.

The purchase and the sentiments expressed at the meeting established that this was an area of the town that needed to be protected and preserved.

When the work was completed a couple of things prevented the townsfolk from fully enjoying the stroll from Avenham Walk to the lower walk in what was to become Avenham Park: one was the awful stink from the sewers that emptied into the Ribble. This persisted until the end of the century, as a correspondent to the Chronicle, signing himself ‘Ventilator’, complained:

‘The stench from these open gratings in … the lower walk at Avenham … in dry weather, is sickening and dangerous to go near with an empty stomach.’

Quite why the effect should have acted more strongly on an empty rather than a full stomach, he did not explain.

The other thing spoiling the enjoyment of the terraces was that blot on the landscape, the disused engine house sitting at the top of the incline to the tram bridge down below. It was not demolished until later in the century, when it was replaced by the Belvedere.

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Source
The Preston Chronicle, freely available on line to members of the Lancashire County Council library: https://www.lancashire.gov.uk/libraries-and-archives/libraries/digital-library/newspapers-old-and-new/