Putting Preston’s history behind gates

Preston Council is proposing to gate off two ancient Preston thoroughfares that Prestonians have been using since the formation of the borough in the twelfth century: Turk’s Head Yard and Old Cock Yard

What the city could lose by the proposal was set out by Steve Harrison in an article by Ed Walker in Blog Preston (see link). Steve regularly leads heritage walks through the two alleys,

The case for gating off the alleys was made in the same article by council leader Matthew Brown, who explained that the proposal was first made by local businesses, which were concerned about anti-social behaviour in the two alleys.

I thought it might be worth looking at the history of one of those alleys – Turk’s Head Yard – to show how important a place it has been in the history of the city.

When Preston was established as a borough more than 800 years ago the street pattern of the town centre was laid out, and the alley now known as Turk’s Head Yard would then as now have led from Church Street down to the Syke brook, then flowing uncovered along the present Syke Street.

The first documentary evidence I’ve found for the alley is in Dr Kuerden’s description of Preston in the late 17th century, he names it Cockshutt’s Backside: ‘Another passage southward about the midst of Church Street more privatly passing either towards the bridge or bote, and is at present styled the passage through Cockshutts backside.’ It was probably named for a member of the Cockshutt family, who feature regularly in the court leet records in that century.

In the survey of the town in 1685 it is named ‘Cheetham’s Wind’. For ‘wind’ read weind, as in the neighbouring, and equally ancient, Mainsprit Weind.

At that date, George Stocks had a house down the alley, and there was a workshop next door with a barn across the way. And at the bottom of the alley were the homes of Thomas Asley, James Thornton and James Clayton.

It was in 1791 that 23-year-old John Horrocks established a spinning mill at the bottom of Turk’s Head Yard and lived there for a short while. That enterprise became the birthplace of the giant Horrockses empire that was to provide employment for thousands of Prestonians in the next century.

Hewitson in his History of Preston recounts how one of Horrocks’s early backers encountered him:

‘One day Mr. Crane quietly walked down “Turk’s Head-court,” and looked into the building tenanted, for working purposes, by Horrocks. And what did he see? He saw Horrocks lying on his back, on the floor, near or under a machine. But he was neither lounging nor asleep. No; he was oiling machinery.

There would have been no anti-social behaviour in Turk’s Head Yard in the early years of the 19th century, for it was then home to Preston’s first police station. And when that was replaced by a new police station on neighbouring Avenham Street in 1831, that building backed onto Turk’s Head Yard.

In fact, it would have been a very respectable neighbourhood, to judge by the fact that the freemasons who were members of the Lodge of Concord No 655 held their regular meetings at Mrs Merrick’s inn in Turk’s Head Yard.

If the people of Preston are to be barred from using these ancient thoroughfares, perhaps large and prominent information boards could be placed at their Church Street entrances, setting out their history. Although that would be a poor substitute for the freedom to wander the length of the alleys, visualising life in previous centuries.

---

Read more here: https://www.blogpreston.co.uk/2026/10/alleyway-gating-plan-draws-criticism-from-history-tour-guide/