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The Harris

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The Harris Library and Museum is the cultural hub of Preston - it says so on the website! It is named after  Edmund Robert Harris, a Preston lawyer, who left in his will £300,000 towards the building of a library in 1877. Building started in 1882 - the year of the Preston Guild - until 1893. A temporary library had operated from 1879. It re-opened on Sunday after being closed for refurbishment for four years, so this seemed a good time to pay a visit. It was built in a neo-classic style, with imposing columns at the front. The style continues inside, with a rotunda similarly supported by columns. The central open area extends four stories up, and they are each tall stories. The space is occupied by a pendulum, which is set swinging at regular intervals. Because of the way the planet is spinning, the swing of the pendulum slowing turns. In the photo the pendulum weight is visible towards the bottom and just right of centre. The building has a number of permanent features that b...
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Skippool Creek

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Skippool Creek is a small tributary of the Wyre. Historically it was an important dock area, until the 1840s when Fleetwood became more important. Today, well, as Wiki puts it it is "now home to mostly run-down vessels". There is a very nice walk beside it, and then along the Wyre estuary, starting from a free car park. The path is in excellent repair. I was hoping to do a circular trip, and it was Underbank Road that let me down, flooded so badly I would have to paddle to get past! This, then, is the creek. After a little way, it bends to the right, while the road goes to the left. The road goes to Blackpool and Fleetwood Yacht Club, and this is taken from their slip way, looking now at the Wyre. The bridge in the distance is the Shard Bridge where the A588 crosses the Wyre and is the lowest bridging point. More of the jetties on the Wyre. Some jetties support huts that look about ready to collapse. Another decepit jetty. A point where a steam joined the Wyre. One of the mor...
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Kirkby

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Another one that strains the definition of "around Preston", Kirkby is a town 6 miles northeast of Liverpool, and 20 southsoutheast of Preston. Until the 1930s, it was a small village, with a railway station and hotel, and a couple of dozen houses. Then World War 2 happened, and a plot of land was selected for a munitions factory - Kirkby Royal Ordinance Factory. The site opened in 1940, and employed over 20,000 people, served by the railway, with its own station to get workers to and from the place. I have read it proved 10% of the ammunition used in the war. After the war, the site was repurposed as an industrial estate, and at the same time the city of Liverpool was looking to build new houses, and the result is a town that now has a population over 40,000. To be honest, the only feature of any great significance is the church of St Chad, the foundations of which date to before the Norman conquest, though the building itself was built 1869-71. It is grade II* listed. The s...
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West Lancashire Railway

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Not to be confused with the West Lancashire Light Railway, a heritage narrow-gauge railway in Tarleton. The West Lancashire Railway was set up to connect Preston and Southport, and had its own terminus at each end. It closed in 1964, and very little remains of the route, and this page tries to catalogue what can still be seen. For photos of it when it was still a railway, here  is a good place to start. Preston It started at Fishergate Hill station, at the bottom of Fishergate Hill, Preston. the station opened in 1882, and closed to passengers just 20 years later, when the railway was taken over by Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway, with trains then using the L&Y main station at the top of the hill. It remained as a goods depot until 1965, but has now been demolished, and even the embankment it was on has gone. The south end is not a park, allowing the space where the station was to be made out.  The north end has disappeared under houses and shops. Out of the sta...
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