On this day … 9 September 1882

September 9, 2023September 9, 2023 ~ Peter Smith

The Preston Guardian carried a description of the plans for the proposed Harris Free Library, Art Gallery and Museum. The description was lifted from the pages of The Builder magazine – a superb publication that Preston’s newspapers constantly mined for free copy.

Today, it is doing the same job for local historians, providing a wealth of material on all aspects of life in nineteenth-century Preston that goes way beyond simple records of the town’s buildings (although it has those by the dozen).

And all this wonderful material is available for free on line, courtesy of the Internet Archive and the Hathi Trust (see sources below).

The magazine was founded in 1843 by the architect of St Walburge’s Church, Joseph Hansom. He did not stay long, with George Godwin taking over as editor in 1844, continuing in the job until 1883. Throughout those four decades, Godwin wrote most of the copy himself, operating with a staff of just five people. It still continues today, now renamed Building.

Twice in the nineteenth century, the magazine visited Preston for an extensive exploration of the town that included a detailed report of the social conditions at the time.

The first visit was in December 1861, and the magazine’s journalist was not impressed, naming and shaming Preston as one of the grimmest towns in Britain. The visit was written up in two lengthy articles in the magazine headed ‘The Black Parts of Preston’, and an extract from the second article captures the journalist’s disgust at what he discovered. It is St Peter’s Girl’s School:

‘… a tasteless, neglected brick building … where the girls’ privies are so disgusting that the children are reduced to the necessity of using the paved yard, which is accordingly defiled with pools of urine; further, a channel has been actually made to convey these away past the entrance-door. The state of the windows and of the whole of the establishment, too, would be a disgrace to a community of savages.’

When the magazine paid its next visit, in 1881, the report it published painted a picture of a totally different town, transformed in the space of twenty years from a place of sordid streets and deplorable housing by two innovations: a sewerage system where previously virtually none existed and building regulations where previously there were few controls on development.

Preston was expanding and rebuilding at such a pace in the nineteenth century that map makers simply couldn’t keep pace with the changes: their maps became out of date between the time of their survey and their publication. What a contrast to previous centuries when a Prestonian could be plucked from one century and deposited in the next and easily find their way around town. Not so the nineteenth century.

The Builder magazine fills the gaps in the map maker’s record by providing detailed reports of every significant development in the town from 1843 onwards. A good early example is in an 1844 edition which includes an article headed ‘New Public Buildings, Preston’, possibly written by Joseph Hansom himself.

The article includes descriptions of planned developments in Cross Street, filling in the street from the grammar school to Winckley Square; a planned extension to Avenham Walk; and new mansions about to be built on the south side of Winckley Square.