My Lancashire - My accounts of the local area

Preston's Wartime History Tying up some loose ends Threads... A stone bobbin was erected in Preston during 2008, at the junction of Avenham Road and Avenham Lane, as part of a commemorative memorial to the Stephen Simpson Gold Thread Works of Preston. I was out and about in early 2024 and took some pictures of it, as I have done on a number of occasions in the past. It's a fantastic sculpture, and it's a pity that it is tucked away where not a lot of people see it. However, it's placement is significant. The Simpson’s Gold thread Works, once on Avenham Road, was of major importance to the history and heritage of the City of Preston. The company produced gold thread and embroidery for military and commercial uniforms. Apparently, work included thread that decorated the uniforms of the Titanic staff. During the war the firm undertook a top secret commission to produce German military badges and insignia for use by English spies operating in Germany. This information had ...

Metalwork Detective Work - Revisited! A Victorian sewer vent, otherwise know as a 'stack pipe' or 'stink pipe'. This item is in Leyland, but it was manufactured in Preston.  It popped up on the Facebook group run by the Milestone Society in 2024.  A member had been introduced to the area through his job and had noticed this 'post' was in pretty much in the same place that a Milestone and Benchmark should have been.  He came to the reasonable conclusion that it was perhaps previously a fingerpost (old road sign) and the plates that had place names and distances to them had been lost.  Although, generally, a fingerpost would have been directly placed on the junction and not many metres away from it. A Victorian sewer vent, know as a 'stink pipe'. I was amazed that I had passed said post hundreds of times and never noticed it.  In my defence, that would normally be whilst cycling or driving, so I am concentrating on the road.  The roundabout at 'Seven ...

The Life and Times of Matthew Brown, the Preston Farmer, Brewer and Property Owner  Original Mathew Brown logo on THE OLD DOG INN, Preston. There are some individuals whose presence in a town is so thoroughly woven into its fabric that, for a time, they are everywhere—and yet, over the years, they become curiously indistinct. Matthew Brown of Preston is one such figure. His name survives, faintly but recognisably, in fragments: in references to breweries, in the histories of public houses, in passing mentions tied to land, trade, and industry. But the man himself—farmer, brewer, property owner—sits just beyond the easy reach of a single, neat biography. This page is not intended to be that biography. Instead, it is an attempt to build one—slowly, carefully, and transparently—out of the surviving traces. What can be said at the outset is that Matthew Brown’s life appears to follow a pattern familiar to the early nineteenth century, yet no less impressive for it. Born into a rur...

Margaret Leyland of Clayton's Gravestone A late-17th-century English gravestone, situated at the Church of St Andrew in Leyland. The inscription reads as follows, as laid out on the stone: HERE•LIETH•INT (here is assumed. That part of the gravestone is damaged.) ERRED•THE•BODY OF•MARGARET•THE WIFE•OF•THVRST AN•LEYLAND•OF CLAYTON•WHO: WAS•BVRIED•THE 5DAY•OF•AVGVST ADGED 27•1686 AS•YUV•ARE•WA LKING•SOE•WAS I•DEATH•DID•ARR EST•AND•HERE•I LIE•AND•MVST•RE MAINE•VNTILL•T HE•JVDGMENT•DA Y•VNTILL•THE•TR VMPET•SOVND•A ND•CALLS•ME•HE NCE•A•WAY Without any broken words, it reads as follows: HERE•LIETH•INTERRED•THE•BODY OF•MARGARET•THE  WIFE•OF•THVRSTAN•LEYLAND•OF CLAYTON•WHO: WAS•BVRIED•THE 5DAY•OF•AVGVST ADGED 27•1686  AS•YUV•ARE•WALKING•SOE•WAS  I•DEATH•DID•ARREST•AND•HERE•I LIE•AND•MVST•REMAINE•VNTILL•THE•JVDGMENT•DAY• VNTILL•THE•TRVMPET•SOVND•AND•CALLS•ME•HENCE•A•WAY Margaret Leyland of Clayton's Gravestone, of 1686, at the Church of St Andrew in Leyland. A Normalised Transcript...