Architect’s unique record of Preston’s mills

Daniel Crowther, who is leading the Restoring Preston Basin campaign, got in touch to discuss a marvellous three-volume thesis on Preston’s cotton mills by the Preston architect Keith Scott. Daniel was lent the volumes by Tarquin Scott, Keith’s son, who died just a few days ago.

Daniel is keen to get the thesis, which Keith Scott wrote while a graduate student at Liverpool University in the 1950s, scanned and put online. He has contacted Alex Miller , the county archivist, to urge him to make the scanning of the copy of thesis held at the archives a priority.

There are only three copies of the thesis that I know of: the one Tarquin lent to Daniel; the one held at Lancashire Archives; and a copy held at Liverpool University.

It is lucky the copy at the archives is now in safe keeping. A few years ago, it sat on an open shelf at the Harris Library, at a time when I was becoming concerned about the lax security there that was putting valuable local history resources at risk.

I grew tired of pointing out the risk to the library staff. So, I took some of the more valuable items from the shelves and walked out of the building with them, without being challenged. I did, of course, return them.

I then contacted Jacquie Crosby, the previous county archivist, thinking to alert her to how easy it was to steal items from the Harris. But she was already aware of the danger, and was arranging to transfer the more valuable items to the safe keeping of the archives.

Luckily, Keith Scott’s thesis was one of the volumes selected for safe transfer. Keith Scott was well aware of the threat posed to Preston’s mill heritage by the owners of the buildings. In his thesis he recounts being told by the manager of one of the mills that the owners placed little value on their records, always looking forward rather than back. The records were simply dumped.

Sadly, the lack of security at the Harris persists. I’ve have been researching the Preston Dock estate and planned to digitise one of the Harris’s two copies of Watery Preston by Paul Godkin. Both have been lost.

I’ve included some of Keith’s line drawings from the thesis below. He visited and prepared drawings of every Preston mill at that date. Except one, where the owner would not allow him access.

And here’s a link to an obituary of Tarquin Scott, by Patricia Harrison, the chair of the Friends of Winckley Square, with which Tarquin was closely associated: https://www.facebook.com/friendsofwinckleysquaregardens/posts/remembering-tarquin-scottit-was-with-great-sadness-that-the-friends-of-winckley-/1506080594881349/