Around Preston

Some interesting buildings around Preston. St George the Martyr Church The church is right in the centre of Preston, but tucked away behind the St George's Centre and easy to miss. Presumably the centre gets its name from the church. St Joseph's Orphanage The orphanage was built in 1872, but closed in 1954. It continued as a hospital until 1988, and a carehome to 2003, but has been derelict since them. Tower House and Avenham Towers This was built in the 1850s as three houses, but designed to look like one in an Italian style. Avenham Colonnade This attractive row of houses is just off Avenham Park. The road slopes significantly, but the roof line is level, so each goes gets taller as you look left. Not sure why it is called a colonnade - there is no sign of a column! Harris Institute - School of Art Note sure what this is nowadays! Winkley Square Winkley Square is perhaps Preston's most famous historical area. Buildings round the square vary considerably in their age; some

 The B5254 runs from Preston to Leyland. The north end is called Leyland Road, and the bit I am interested in is from the river down to Bee Lane. I have lived just off it for over twenty years in three different houses. What I like about it is the cacophony of housing. It looks as though people built houses randomly along as the whim took them. So I did some research to try to find out when each house was built. This is the result... The data is patchy. However, using old maps, I could assign most of the buildings to a range of twenty years. Quite a few have dates on plaques which helps a lot! So we start at the river, and head south. This first image is the Bridge Inn, built 1826, now Tinkerbell's Nursery, from the old bridge, built 1759, with the new Methodist church, 1910, to the left. The Bridge used to be our local, and it was sad to see it close, though the arrival of children meant we had already stopped visiting it much. A short way south, and you can see where the railway

Walton-le-Dale is just south of Preston. At one time the A6 passed through, before going through Bamber Bridge on its way to Chorley and points further south. It is mentioned in the Domesday as Waletune, become known as Walton-le-Dale (Walton in the valley) from about 1300. Its big claim to fame is as the birthplace of textile printing. In the 1785s, Livesey, Hargeaves, Hall & Co had two mills in Walton-le-Dale, using a process invented by Thomas (some sources say Joseph) Bell. It appears the company over-reached (according to Wiki), and went bankrupt just two or three years later, owing £1.5M - a huge amount back then - and the bank they owed the money to went bust two days later. It is not big - Wiki calls it a large village - but has a lot of old, attractive buildings, and is definitely worth a walk around. We start from where the A6, London Road, crosses the Ribble There was a pub here called the Bridge Inn (image here ). It closed in 2013, and was knocked down, to be replaced