Clifton Place — a Victorian terrace

Among a collection of books and pamphlets on the history of Preston kindly donated to me by the journalist and historian Anthony Coppin was a typed A4 page written some fifty years ago telling the story of Clifton Place in the Ashton district of Preston. It describes the development of a terrace of eight houses that the author of the page describes as ‘Paradise’.

The houses were built on a meadow that had been owned by Sir Peter Hesketh Fleetwood, of Tulketh Hall, who was a Preston MP. The meadow was cut through by the Preston and Wyre Railway, which opened in 1840. The railway was subsidised by Sir Peter and linked to his new town and resort of Fleetwood; the houses occupy the top half of the meadow bisected by the railway.

The houses are still there today and they are still a secret, hidden paradise. So secret, in fact, that Clifton Place is not named on Google maps.

There is no name of author or date on the sheet, but there is reference to the coming of Central Lancashire New Town, which suggests a date in the early 1970s. The author writes:

‘… the Central Lancashire Development Corporation has plans to demolish No. 8 Clifton Place and to run a road through its garden and most of the remaining garden area, which of course constitutes its unique charm, to link up with projected development at Ingol.’

The road was built, it is Tom Benson Way, but No. 8 and the garden area were spared, although No. 8 did lose a side portion of its garden.

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The story of Clifton Place

Yesterday

Between about 1700 and 1835 the central part of Ashton-upon-Ribble consisted of agricultural land, belonging to the great estate of the Hesketh family of Tulketh Hall. It was in 1835 that the Preston and Wyre Railway (now the Blackpool line} cut diagonally across a meadow at the North East corner of the estate. farmed by one Richard Fowler, thus forming a triangular piece of land, bounded by the railway, the adjacent meadow and Long Lane (now Blackpool Road).

The railway was the brainchild of Sir Peter Hesketh Fleetwood, M.P. for Preston from 1838 to 1847, and as such was allowed free passage over his lands, to link up his new town of Fleetwood with Preston and other Lancs. industrial towns. Sir Peter subsidised the scheme heavily, perhaps too heavily, for in 1848 Tulketh Hall was sold, and during the following years the Ashton estates broken up.

By 1879 that odd triangle of land had been bought by local builder, Robert Jones. On it, along the south side of Long Lane, he built Clifton Terrace, then in 1886/1887 the first six houses of Clifton Place, including Garden Cottage (No.1), where he was to spend the last years of his life, still owned today by his grandson, Arthur Jones. When in 1887 Robert Jones applied to Preston Corporation for permission to build two more houses in Clifton Place. this was at first refused, and was only granted after he had made the following undertaking:

‘I the undersigned do hereby covenant undertake and agree for myself my heirs executors administrators and assigns that the same lands (i.e. the present gardens of Clifton Place) shall for ever hereafter remain and be free from any erection or building thereon of any kind whatsoever and open and unbuilt upon.’

This was Robert Jones’ second undertaking in respect of Clifton Place. His first contract, for the purchase of the land, had contained the following clause:

“and the said purchaser doth hereby covenant with the vendor for ever … that no building on the said land shall be used … for any purpose which may cause more smoke or noise than a dwellinghouse or any disagreeable smell which may be considered noisome inconvenient or detrimental to the neighbourhood.’

Today

So far, these promises have been kept. Clifton Place remains as it was over one hundred years ago, its rural charm intensified by the urban development now surrounding it. Sitting on its terrace on a Summer evening, among the roses and the fruit trees, it is difficult to believe that the hurly-burly of Blackpool Road, its traffic, shops and crowds, lies only a few steps away. down a shady, ivy-covered passageway. Not for nothing has the local name for Clifton Place, as far back as anyone can remember, been ‘Paradise’.

And tomorrow?

It would be comforting to be able to end on an optimistic note, to say that Clifton Place will continue to provide a haven of beauty and tranquillity in the heart of Ashton. In fact the Central Lancashire Development Corporation has plans to demolish No. 8 Clifton Place and to run a road through its garden and most of the remaining garden area, which of course constitutes its unique charm, to link up with projected development at Ingol.

Only three things now remain to us of a whole chapter of Ashton’s history: a grassy patch where once Tulketh Hall stood; the street names round it recalling the Hall, the Heskeths and their Lancashire estates (Hall St., Tulketh Cres. Wyre St. etc.) and a cluster of eight small houses whose garden-site corresponds exactly to a corner of a meadow on a tithe-map dated 1838.

AND UNLESS A CONCERTED EFFORT IS MADE SOON TO PRESERVE OUR HERITAGE, SOON ONLY THE STREET NAMES MAY REMAIN.

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