All change in 14th-century Preston
In the middle of the 14th century the Black Death reached Preston and killed up to 3,000 people in the parish. The first cases were recorded at the beginning of September 1349, the last in early January 1350. It took just three months for this brutal plague to carry off as much as half the population of the town.
No less brutal was the sacking and burning of Preston by marauding Scots led by Robert the Bruce in 1322, one of several such raids the county was suffering at that time. And brutal indeed was the Little Ice Age that descended on Europe at the beginning of the century, wrecking harvests and issuing in years of recurring famines, the worst of which came in 1315.
The calamities probably accounted for the major changes in Preston society by the end of the century
Ellen — a working-class biography
There are numerous biographies of ‘the great and the good’ of Preston in the various histories of the town. What is lacking are the stories of ordinary members of the working class who had no one to chronicle their lives. Family historians are expert at uncovering these lost histories, and a particularly good example is the biography that Peter Moulding has written of his great-great-grandmother, Ellen Moulding.
Ellen Moulding’s biography
Preston History Library
I’ve just started building a Preston History on-line library to bring together in one place the ever-growing number of out-of-copyright books and articles relating to the history of the town that are appearing on the internet. It’s very much a work in progress and so feedback that can iron out any access problems would be gratefully received, before more titles are added. The aim is to provide material that can be viewed on line, printed, downloaded and searched.
Preston History Library
Poverty and privilege in Victorian Preston
The great divide between rich and poor in Victorian Preston is clearly illustrated by the lives of two men who shared the same surname, but little else. Timothy Pedder, an unemployed bargeman born in Thurnham, near Lancaster, died of starvation in ‘a cold, gloomy-looking little hovel’ in Back Hope Street, Preston, and was buried on 13 January 1862. He lived in the town for only a few years. Edward Pedder, a partner in the Preston Old Bank and a member of a family long-established in the town, lived in style at Ashton Park. He died on 21 March 1861, just three weeks before his bank collapsed. Edward was exposed as a swindler and the shamed family fled Preston.
A tale of two Pedders
Edwin Waugh in 1882 .
Edwin Waugh’s Portrait of Preston
The Lancashire writer Edwin Waugh visited Preston in the 1860s and recorded his impressions in a book, Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk During the Cotton Famine. The book contains dozens of distressing accounts that reveal what life could be like for the working class in Victorian Preston. Waugh’s verdict on the plight of the town’s poor was that Preston ‘… has seen many a black day [but] it has never seen so much wealth and so much bitter poverty together as now.’
A disturbing view of Victorian Preston — 1
A disturbing tour of Victorian Preston
Pity the poor pupils at St. Peter’s School for Girls in Preston in 1861:
‘… 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.’
Taken from The Builder magazine in December 1861 as part of a series titled ‘Condition of Our Towns’ .
Barley, beer and the Lancaster Canal
When the Lancaster Canal arrived in Preston at the end of the 18th century one of the first enterprises to take advantage of its services was the Maudland Maltkilns. Barges laden with barley began to feed the kilns to provide the raw material for the brewing industry to supply the hundreds of public houses that quickly sprouted in the town.
Full story: Barley, beer and the Lancaster Canal
The maltster at the Maudland Maltkilns was John Noble, who was one of the principal opponents of the town’s bigoted sectarian MP Robert Townley Parker.
John Noble — Preston’s Catholic radical
The last days of Walton Hall
The death of Sir Henry Philip Hoghton of Walton Hall in 1835 ended the family’s time as resident lords of the manor of Walton-le-Dale. His son and heir, Henry, had married well, acquiring the Bold estate at Wigan, changing his name to Bold-Hoghton and seemingly showing no desire to return to Walton-le-Dale. The contents of the hall were put up for auction — including Sir Henry’s Egyptian mummy.
A tale of two belvederes
For a brief period in the middle of the 19th century two belvederes or summer houses faced one another a mile apart across the Ribble at Preston: one newly built in Miller Park and the other falling into ruins at Walton Hall.
The belvederes story
Platford Dales — a medieval town field
The plan above based on Lang’s 1774 map of Preston captures the field pattern of part of the landscape north of the town on the eve of the industrialisation that was to cover the area in houses and factories in the course of the next century. The names of the fields allow for a tentative reconstruction of the landscape in previous centuries, stretching back to Norman times. The fields on the map are enclosures of one of Preston’s large medieval town fields: Platford Dales.
The history of Platford Dales
Preston, Ireland
and the Glorious Revolution
William III, Col. Thomas Bellingham and James II
When James II fled England following William of Orange’s invasion in 1688 his forces regrouped in Ireland to contest the Glorious Revolution settlement. They provoked an exodus of Protestant gentry, who abandoned their estates in fear for their lives.
Their accounts of atrocities inflicted on the Protestant community stoked already inflamed anti-Catholic feelings in England. Many of these Protestants passed through Preston after arriving in England, and some settled there to wait out the conflict.
Their visits, and accounts of their sufferings, were recorded by the diarist Thomas Bellingham .
Contributed articles
When David Eaves, of Clitheroe, was researching his family history he came across a manuscript of a memoir written by John Gerrard Eaves, who became a Benedictine monk and rose to become Abbot of Fort Augustus Abbey at Loch Ness before becoming vicar-general of Sweden. The memoir contains an account of the Southworth and Eaves families of Lancashire, and of Saint John Southworth. The abbot, who was born in Bamber Bridge, had many relatives and friends in the Preston area. David published it as a booklet a few years ago, which has now been republished here: Abbot Oswald Eaves
This website aims to provide a platform for similar articles. All contributions considered.
Reviews
and Notices
Stephen Bellis has very generously put on line his PhD thesis, ‘Catholic chaplains on the Western Front 1915-1919 – Lancashire’s pivotal role’, on which the above book is based. It includes extended extracts from the diary of a Lytham-born priest and former Ansdell parish priest Fr Fred Gillett SJ.
Catholic chaplains on the Western Front
Recent Links
Mr and Mrs William Atherton
Profiting from the slave trade
Aidan Turner-Bishop has added a comprehensive introduction to the Lancashire slave trade to the Preston Historical Society website, with particular reference to the Preston people, such as the Athertons, who profited from it. Find it here: http://www.prestonhistoricalsociety.org.uk/members-articles.html
Building a better Preston?
Two articles on Preston council housing have just been put on line. They are both well written and represent a major contribution to the history of the town. The first describes the town’s first council estates developed between the wars. The second tackles the era of high-rise flats.
Preston’s pre-war council housing
Preston’s post-war council housing
Preston trade directories
One of the best sources for anybody interested in the history of Preston are the trade directories published from the early 19th century up until the 1950s. Many of these directories have been put online at the Preston Past and Present Facebook group by Barney Smith. More are promised.
David Berry has now put on line a wonderfully detailed treatment of the infamous 1768 Preston election , which saw Catholic chapels burned amidst the riots that accompanied the Stanleys wresting control of the town’s parliamentary seats from the Corporation. It’s an excellent read.
Work in progress
Col Thomas Bellingham
Bellingham/Rawstorne diaries
The diaries of Thomas Bellingham and Lawrence Rawstorne open a window on life in 17th-century Preston, and reveal the web of family and social connections that enabled the gentry to govern Lancashire. Transcripts of Bellingham’s diary entries from 1 August 1688 to 12 September 1690 and those of Rawstorne’s from September 1683 to 25 December 1689 can be found here: Bellingham/Rawstorne diaries . Editing of Bellingham’s diary has now been completed, with the exception of those entries for his two periods in Ireland, which are beyond the scope of this website. Editing of the entries in Rawstorne’s diary that overlap with the Bellingham diary has also been completed. The two diaries cover the period from August 1688 to May 1690: including the Glorious Revolution, the accession of William III and the campaign in Ireland.
Preston after Domesday
Preston’s
pre-industrial landscape
Work continues in matching documents and plans to map the changing face of Preston from Domesday to the advent of the cotton mills: Preston’s pre-industrial landscape – introduction
The Preston Poor Tax Survey
A key source for the reconstruction of the town’s pre-industrial landscape, this survey, which contains a wealth of information on the town in 1732, has now been transcribed here: Preston Poor Tax Survey The hundreds of references it contains to the people and places of early 18th-century Preston are being slowly mapped, as shown in the illustration above.
Articles
1685 Survey of Preston
A detailed survey of Preston was carried out at the end of the 17th century and the surveyors’ sketch plans have been preserved. Internal evidence suggests they were produced in 1685 and they have been loosely attributed to the antiquarian Richard Kuerden. The plans include the name of the owner/occupier of each property.
1732 Preston Poor Tax Survey Records supplying the names of the owners, occupiers and value of every house, barn, stable, workshop and field in the borough, with a wealth of additional information.
1774 Survey of Preston A survey of Preston was prepared in 1774 together with a plan. They provide a wonderfully detailed picture of the landscape on the eve of its transformation by industrialisation
A tale of two belvederes
For a brief period in the middle of the 19th century two belvederes or summer houses faced one another a mile apart across the Ribble at Preston: one newly built in Miller Park and the other falling into ruins at Walton Hall.
The belvederes story
A disturbing tour of Victorian Preston
Pity the poor pupils at St. Peter’s School for Girls in Preston in 1861:
‘… 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.’
Taken from The Builder magazine in December 1861 as part of a series titled ‘Condition of Our Towns’ .
A very disreputable Quaker
John Scansfield was suspected of being a Jesuit and an agent of James II when he visited Lancashire and the North in the 1680s. That was certainly how he was viewed in Preston when he appeared in the town in 1688.
A 17th-century
Lancashire road map
Amongst an extensive collection of 17th-century Lancashire maps and plans found at Towneley Hall, including street plans of Lancaster and Preston, were road maps showing routes through the old county from south to north. Supplemented by an itinerary through the county prepared by the antiquarian Richard Kuerden, they provide a wealth of topographical information.
All change in 14th-century Preston
In the middle of the 14th century the Black Death reached Preston and killed up to 3,000 people in the parish. The first cases were recorded at the beginning of September 1349, the last in early January 1350. It took just three months for this brutal plague to carry off as much as half the population of the town.
No less brutal was the sacking and burning of Preston by marauding Scots led by Robert the Bruce in 1322, one of several such raids the county was suffering at that time. And brutal indeed was the Little Ice Age that descended on Europe at the beginning of the century, wrecking harvests and issuing in years of recurring famines, the worst of which came in 1315.
The calamities probably accounted for the major changes in Preston society by the end of the century
Anglo-Irish relations in
mid-nineteenth-century Preston
Newcastle University lecturer Jack Hepworth has contributed an article on Anglo-Irish relations in mid-nineteenth-century Preston. It builds on the dissertation that he wrote for his BA degree at Durham University. Jack graduated with a first in history and was awarded a Vice-Chancellor’s Scholarship for Academic Excellence in 2014-2015 and the Gibson Prize for History in 2015. Jack was born and brought up in Preston and South Ribble.
Anglo-Irish relations in mid-nineteenth-century Preston
Barley, beer and the Lancaster Canal
When the Lancaster Canal arrived in Preston at the end of the 18th century one of the first enterprises to take advantage of its services was the Maudland Maltkilns. Barges laden with barley began to feed the kilns to provide the raw material for the brewing industry to supply the hundreds of public houses that quickly sprouted in the town.
Full story: Barley, beer and the Lancaster Canal
The maltster at the Maudland Maltkilns was John Noble, who was one of the principal opponents of the town’s bigoted sectarian MP Robert Townley Parker.
John Noble — Preston’s Catholic radical
Bellingham/Rawstorne diaries
The diaries of Thomas Bellingham and Lawrence Rawstorne open a window on life in 17th-century Preston.
‘Child murder’
in Victorian Preston
Clergy in khaki
Catholic priests from Preston volunteered to serve as army chaplains in the Great War. They included Fr Bernard Page who saw service on the Western Front and in revolutionary Russia. On his return to Preston Fr Page produced a history of a Catholic charity that provides much interesting material on life for Catholics in the town from the early 18th century:
When Preston’s Catholics had to lie under ye Bushel
Other Preston-born Catholic army chaplains included Fr Tom Baines , who died in France in 1918, and Fr John Myerscough .
Fr Baines and Fr Page
Conflicted sexuality
in Edwardian Preston
A rather sad tale of unrequited love gives a rare glimpse into the private lives of the well-to-do families living in the Winckley Square district of Preston at the beginning of the last century, revealing the extent to which homosexuality was viewed as unacceptable at that time.
Counting Catholics
An 1820 census of Preston Catholics provides a map of the distribution of members of the faith in the town. It suggests a possible sectarian divide at that time between the Church Street and Friargate districts. The social composition of the Catholic population can be sketched by linking information from four trade directories of the town compiled at the same time with the records in the census.
Counting Catholics in 19th-century Preston
de Hoghton property deeds
Notes on hundreds of Preston property deeds stretching in time from the reign of Edward I to that of Elizabeth I.
Desirable Dwellings
– Nigel Morgan’s ‘lost book’ The best guide to middle-class housing in Victorian Preston and a detailed source for the social history of the town. Rediscovered only very recently.
Domesday Preston
An attempt at a reconstruction of the Preston landscape shortly after the Norman Conquest.
Edwin Waugh in 1882 .
Edwin Waugh’s Portrait of Preston
The Lancashire writer Edwin Waugh visited Preston in the 1860s and recorded his impressions in a book, Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk During the Cotton Famine. The book contains dozens of distressing accounts that reveal what life could be like for the working class in Victorian Preston. Waugh’s verdict on the plight of the town’s poor was that Preston ‘… has seen many a black day [but] it has never seen so much wealth and so much bitter poverty together as now.’
A disturbing view of Victorian Preston — 1
Ellen — a working-class biography
There are numerous biographies of ‘the great and the good’ of Preston in the various histories of the town. What is lacking are the stories of ordinary members of the working class who had no one to chronicle their lives. Family historians are expert at uncovering these lost histories, and a particularly good example is the biography that Peter Moulding has written of his great-great-grandmother, Ellen Moulding.
Ellen Moulding’s biography
Foster Square:
Victorian Preston’s ‘worst slum’
A 19th-century census enumerator in Preston’s Little Ireland was so incensed by the conditions in which the residents in his district were forced to live that he used the cramped space of his census return to express his feelings.
Frenchwood Tannery
One of the foulest of the many obnoxious trades of Victorian England was the tanning of leather. The Dixon family of Bank Parade, Avenham, developed Preston’s largest tannery on their own doorstep.
Friargate’s
Catholic ‘chapels’ 1605-1990
Was a Catholic chapel opened in Friargate in 1605, as has been commonly supposed? The evidence is thin.
Fulwood Forest
One of the major influences on the development of Preston in the Middle Ages was the imposition of the Forest of Fulwood by the Norman conquerors.
Gormanston Register
The Preston family, who took their name from the town in which they settled in the 13th century, established themselves in Ireland shortly after, becoming the Viscounts Gormanston. One of those Irish descendants collated the family property deeds at the end of the 14th century, including scores relating to Preston.
Great War conscription
and Edwardian
Preston’s ‘class ceiling’
Why did so very few conscripts from Preston’s working-class districts find a place in the officer’s mess, and what does it say about the class divide in Edwardian Preston?
Harris Library
local studies material
Some of the material previously held at the Harris has been transferred to Lancashire Archives. It is as yet unclear what remains at the Harris and what is now housed at Bow Lane.
Henry Barnacle
and the Transit of Venus
The claim to fame of an astronomer who served as principal of a Preston college at the beginning of the last century was based on a completely false depiction of the part he played in the scientific expedition to Hawaii to measure the Transit of Venus. The true account of his time in what were then known as the Sandwich Islands has been revealed in journals kept by other members of the expedition.
Henry Barnacle and the Transit of Venus
Historian Dorothy Marshall – a product of Preston’s Park School
One of the ‘overlooked’ female historians of the last century who, among her many more serious achievements, is credited with getting the future politician Roy Jenkins into Oxford.
Irish ‘ghettoes’
in 19th-century Preston
Does the district known as Little Ireland that was firmly established in Preston by the middle of the 19th century qualify as a ‘ghetto’? It was home to Irish immigrants attracted by the town’s employment opportunities and driven by the famine that was devastating their country. The map above suggests there might indeed have been an Irish ghetto in the town, but the reality was more complex.
Irish ‘ghettoes’ in 19th-century Preston
Irish not welcome in 1830s Preston
When the Rev John Clay (left), the 19th-century Preston prison chaplain and social reformer, was asked to supply evidence to a Royal Commission ‘on the state of the Irish poor in Great Britain’ he responded, ‘…it would be advantageous to this town and neighbourhood if the immigration of Irish could be completely stopped.’
Irish not welcome in 1830s Preston
Jacobins in Preston
Edward Baines: youthful revolutionary?
E. P. Thompson, the celebrated historian of the English working class, wrote that the journalist and Whig MP Edward Baines was secretary of a Jacobin Club in Preston at the end of the 18th century.
Jacobins in Walton-le-Dale
Another writer produced a fictional autobiography of a Jacobin born in Walton-le-Dale who accompanied Thomas Paine to Paris at the time of the French Revolution. 20th-century historians treated the fiction as fact.
Kuerden’s Preston
The antiquarian Richard Kuerden left a detailed description of Preston at the end of the 17th century.
Lancashire land measurement
When is an ‘acre’ not an acre? When it is one of the several variations on the statute measure to be found on Preston documents well into the 19th century.
Moor Park
– the first municipal park?
Preston’s claim to pre-eminence in the provision of public open space was, some years ago, called into question by a leading academic. Was he right?
Platford Dales — a medieval town field The plan above based on Lang’s 1774 map of Preston captures the field pattern of part of the landscape north of the town on the eve of the industrialisation that was to cover the area in houses and factories in the course of the next century. The names of the fields allow for a tentative reconstruction of the landscape in previous centuries, stretching back to Norman times. The fields on the map are enclosures of one of Preston’s large medieval town fields: Platford Dales.
The history of Platford Dales
Poverty and privilege in Victorian Preston
The great divide between rich and poor in Victorian Preston is clearly illustrated by the lives of two men who shared the same surname, but little else. Timothy Pedder, an unemployed bargeman born in Thurnham, near Lancaster, died of starvation in ‘a cold, gloomy-looking little hovel’ in Back Hope Street, Preston, and was buried on 13 January 1862. He lived in the town for only a few years. Edward Pedder, a partner in the Preston Old Bank and a member of a family long-established in the town, lived in style at Ashton Park. He died on 21 March 1861, just three weeks before his bank collapsed. Edward was exposed as a swindler and the shamed family fled Preston.
A tale of two Pedders
Preston deeds
in the Cockersand Cartulary
A list and abstract of the deeds to the properties Cockersand Abbey held in Preston at the end of the 13th century. They provide glimpses of the life and landscape of the medieval town.
Preston Guardian
Preston historian Henry L. Kirby compiled a four-volume digest of articles in the Preston Guardian covering the period from 1844 to 1905. He has left a valuable chronology of the town’s development. See also Anthony Hewitson’s Preston chronology 705-1883.
Preston History Library
I’ve just started building a Preston History on-line library to bring together in one place the ever-growing number of out-of-copyright books and articles relating to the history of the town that are appearing on the internet. It’s very much a work in progress and so feedback that can iron out any access problems would be gratefully received, before more titles are added. The aim is to provide material that can be viewed on line, printed, downloaded and searched.
Preston History Library
William III, Col. Thomas Bellingham and James II
Preston, Ireland
and the Glorious Revolution
When James II fled England following William of Orange’s invasion in 1688 his forces regrouped in Ireland to contest the Glorious Revolution settlement. They provoked an exodus of Protestant gentry, who abandoned their estates in fear for their lives.
Their accounts of atrocities inflicted on the Protestant community stoked already inflamed anti-Catholic feelings in England. Many of these Protestants passed through Preston after arriving in England, and some settled there to wait out the conflict.
Their visits, and accounts of their sufferings, were recorded by the diarist Thomas Bellingham .
Preston Moor
Preston Moor was originally a part of Fulwood Forest that was separated from the forest and granted to Preston by a charter of 1252. It continued to play an important part in the economy of the town up until the 19th century.
Preston’s
pre-industrial landscape
The pace of development of Preston’s landscape from the Middle Ages onwards was marked by slow organic growth until the dynamic and swamping impact of industrial development in the 19th century.
Public School Prestonians
‘Why were the newly rich businessmen of the Lancashire mills sending their children south to expensive schools, wondered the Taunton Commission, set up in 1864 to examine the public schools. It was so that “they may lose their northern tongue … and be quite away from home influences”.’
Reforming Preston
When Margaret Spillane (or Ainscough, as she then was) became the first woman to graduate from Trinity College, Cambridge, her success was largely due to the dissertation she wrote on municipal reform in Preston. That was 40 years ago, when, during a summer spent researching at the Harris Library and the Lancashire Record Office, she benefited from the help and advice of the Preston historian Nigel Morgan (see below).
The result of her researches was a masterly treatment of the transformation in the government of the town, changing the corporation from a self-selected body into an elected assembly. However, this did not result in a transfer of power from the Tories to the Liberals and Radicals as in most other boroughs. The drawing of the new ward boundaries effectively guaranteed Tory control of the council.
Reforming Preston
Social and Political
Leadership in Preston 1820-60
The Preston historian Nigel Morgan’s postgraduate thesis on the political history of the town in the early 19th century. An essential source for the period of the town’s most dynamic changes.
Septimus Tebay
From the back streets of Preston to the back streets of Farnworth by way of Cambridge and headship of Rivington Grammar School, the life of Septimus Tebay is a remarkable story of clogs to clogs in one generation.
Septimus Tebay — maths prodigy
Stephenson Terrace
– what’s in a name?
The name of the famous Stephenson has for more than 150 years been wrongly attached to this elegant terrace.
Street name origins
Back in 1992 in faraway New Zealand a professor of botany published The Street Names of Preston to mark the 80th birthday of the author of the book, his Prestonian father, John Bannister.
The last days of Walton Hall
The death of Sir Henry Philip Hoghton of Walton Hall in 1835 ended the family’s time as resident lords of the manor of Walton-le-Dale. His son and heir, Henry, had married well, acquiring the Bold estate at Wigan, changing his name to Bold-Hoghton and seemingly showing no desire to return to Walton-le-Dale. The contents of the hall were put up for auction — including Sir Henry’s Egyptian mummy.
The story of
Tulketh and Tulketh Hall
Kim Travis has traced the history of the district from pre-Norman times up to the present day. It is a marvellously detailed reconstruction.
Trade directories
The Preston directories are a rich source for historians, providing the raw materials for mapping the changing social geography of the town from the beginning of the 19th century well into the 20th.
Victorian Preston’s
Men from the Pru
At the end of the nineteenth century a small army of insurance agents was tramping the streets of Britain. They were collecting weekly contributions on the millions of policies taken out by working class savers anxious to protect their dependants from the terrible consequences of the sudden loss of a family breadwinner. The lives of the Preston contingent of that army are examined here.
When Preston’s Catholics
had to lie under ye Bushel
A former priest at St Walburge’s published a history of a Catholic charity that provides much interesting material on life for Catholics in the town from the early 18th century.
Who owned Lancashire?
When the 1871 census demonstrated just how much land was held in so few hands the Radicals were jubilant. The Conservative Earl of Derby was prodded to stand up in the House of Lords to demand a recount by way of a government survey. The result came to be known as the Second Domesday Book. When published the Tories were dismayed and the Radical doubly delighted. The earl was shown to hold the most extensive estate in Lancashire by far, and the most valuable.
Who owned Lancashire?