My Lancashire - My accounts of the local area

FAREWELL TO THE SUMMIT The following text is taken from a 1968 publication entitled " FAREWELL TO THE SUMMIT " that was given to me by a friend who has a mutual interest in Canal related history. It was written by Ian Moss to accompany a visit to the Southern section of the Lancaster Canal towards Walton Summit and the adjoining Tram Road to Preston.  At the time, both were in a state of disuse, but were much more visible than today.  At the time of the visit, the construction of the M61 Motorway was underway, and this highway cut through the canal.  Thus, putting it out of action forever. I am not sure if there are any copyright issues with sharing the text.  My understanding is that it isn't a formal book publication with an ISBN etc.  I am only trying to get this information out to a wider audience, and share an account from over half a century ago.  If you know otherwise, please let me know.  If is causing anyone an issue, I can remove it.  The text has been modified

Preston's Windmills Part 2 Following on from a previous post about a search for historical windmills around Preston in Lancashire , I continued to keep a watch for anything related when reviewing other historical information. At the point of publishing the last post on the subject, I had pinpointed the location of eight windmills around the town using the first edition Ordnance Survey Maps from the 1840s.   Factory Windmill (Moor Lane tower mill) Friargate Windmill  Margaret Street Windmill Park Lane Windmill Parr Croft Windmill Singleton Row Windmill - now known as Craggs Row and the tower still exists  Snow Hill Windmill Cadley Moor Windmill  As per the first post, much of this history happened before the advent of photography, so there was no photographic evidence for any of the windmills other than the tower of Craggs Row windmill.  There are no photographs of this windmill with the sails still intact either.  However, there were a number of very good illustrations, which appea

  The Remains of Preston's Third Town Hall A journey to Howick Cross In January 2023, on a pleasant but very cold day, I went for a walk along the Ribble Way on the section from Penwortham Holme towards the western end of the route that ultimately ends at the Dolphin Inn pub in the marshes of Longton village. The river has a lot of reinforcement around that area, I presume to help prevent erosion.  This includes rubble that I think came from the old Penwortham Power Station and a section of more formal gabions (wire mesh crates with rubble inside them stack upon each other like bricks) to protect the feet of the electricity pylons that take the high tension cable across the River Ribble.  The remains mainly consist of reinforced concrete sections and red brick as you first leave Holme Road toward the marshes.  This led me to speculate that it was from a relatively modern structure.  A View of Preston from Howick Cross However, when I reach the point where Mill Brook flows into the

Fall Of Thirteen Arches,  of the Ribble Viaduct on the Preston Extension of the East Lancashire Railway. Following on from my post about the Hidden Viaduct near Preston, once know as "The Blue Bridge", I put the old picture looking from Miller Park and my photograph of the top of a buried arch on a local social media group.  That solicited a comment from a group member that pointed towards an old news article. Hidden Viaduct near Preston, once know as "The Blue Bridge" This news article revealed that there had been problems with the arches during the construction, and this actually led to thirteen of them collapsing.  It was entitled "Fall of Thirteen Arches of the Ribble Viaduct on the Preston Extension of the East Lancashire Railway".  It came from the Preston Guardian published on Saturday 27th October 1849.  I ran the scanned image of the newspaper extract through an online OCR (optical character recognition) software process and converted the image in