Around Preston

 Friargate is the second main shopping road in Preston. Its south end joins Market Street at the Flag Market, just north of Fishergate, the biggest shopping street. It heads northwest, to meet Fylde Road at the university. Apparently Friargate was home to Preston's first catholic church and first Indian restaurant, and at one time was the main commercial road. The name relates to a Franciscan monastery founded in 1221, and apparently the exact location of the friary is unknown . Franciscan monks dressed in grey robes, and hence there is a Wetherspoons called  The Grey Friar. In 1991 the street was bifurcated by the Ring Road, which did it no favours. The shorter section south of the Ring Road is still busy - though a lot of shops are empty - but the north section not so much. There is work in progress to pedestrianise the north section, which may improve it, and its proximity to the university certainly helps. We will start from the end of Flyde Road, where this page finished, and

History Marsh Lane runs from Friargate in the east to The Strand in the west. In the nineteenth century the first bit was Bridge Street, as far as the canal (which is no longer there), and was then Bridge Lane as far as Bow Lane (the north end of which was Spring Street at that time). From there, it was Marsh Lane, so called because it went to Preston Marsh. In 1825, New Quay was built just beyond the end of the lane, which was very quickly renamed Victoria Quay, and was about where Evans Halshaw is today. At this time there was a pub at the end of the lane called the New Quay Inn. When the dock was built, the course of the river was modified, and a new quay, Diversion Quay, built to handle ships while the dock was built (more on that here ). However, the road entrance to the docks remained at the same place, even after the dock opened (with a second at the north end of The Strand, and later a third opposite Old Docks House), and by 1890 a second pub across Marsh Lane from the New Quay

Water Lane rises steeply to pass under an impressive viaduct. At one time this was something of a focal point for Preston, somewhere for parades and the like. Nowadays, it feels like one big road junction. At the west end, where we begin, are Watery Lane and the Strand, and between them was an entrance to the docks. The photo below is looking that way, but I think was the entrance to Dick, Kerr, and later English Electric. The entrance to the docks was the other side of the building on the right. A photo here shows how it used to look.  Back in the late forties there were two roundabouts here, as you can see here . I suspect the roundabouts were new at that time. Modern roundabouts are considered to date from 1966, so this was pretty forward-thinking. The first pub is called the Grand Junction. It dates from the mid-nineteenth century, so pre-dates the roundabouts by about a century. The second, across Tulketh Road, is the Wheatsheaf. It was the Mighty Muldoons for a while, but has re