Skip to main content

What Will Preston look like in 1992? A slideshow from 1972 Preston Guild

What Will Preston look like in 1992?

A slideshow from 1972 Preston Guild
predicting what Preston would be like in 1992

No, it's not the first of the 'Forward to the Past' trilogy. This is a bit like watching an old Sci-Fi film predicting the future 50 years after it has been made. No, we're still not buzzing around in flying cars, thankfully.

View West from Ladywell, towards the Docks and Penwortham Power Station
View West from Ladywell, towards the Docks and Penwortham Power Station


This short film, which is  is effectively a forerunner of a PowerPoint presentation before personal computers had been conceived, let alone Microsoft software (...am I allowed to advertise on here? Other reputable software providers are also available, etc.), didn't quite make it to 3 minutes before they were getting it wrong. 

Do you think that we will get a University?


The car:
It's a good servant, but the more concessions we make to its use, the more it becomes our master.
Hmmm. we still haven't cracked that nut.

The proposal for the River Ribble was ridiculous, but they got the canal right. It's just a pity that the University they said were weren't going to have built on the bits of the canal that would have allowed it to come back into the centre.

What IS the factory that she saw from the train? [12:15} This one has got me scratching my head a bit. The new gas works, 'all lit up and very spectacular'. Where on earth are they referring to?

...And we want people who are more concerned with helping to make the town a better place than with complaining about the things they think are wrong...
I hear you on that one!

There are some good stills of the town in the film, but you have take them with a 'pinch of salt', because there are quite a number from other places that are referred to as examples.

What Will Preston look like in 1992? from Harris Museum on Vimeo.


Made in 1972, a Preston Guild year, looking forward to what might have changed by the next Guild in 1992.

View it on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/47656089


PS sorry, I think you need to login to Vimeo to watch it. However, I don't think that is to onerous


---------------------------------------------------------------------------

My accounts of the local area - About this Blog





Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Hidden Viaduct of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway

The Hidden Viaduct of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway The Old Railway Line On a personal level, I am familiar with the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway, or at least the disused sections around Preston and South Ribble.  I used to cross a section near Bamber Bridge on may way to school in the mid nineteen-seventies, and I am sure that there were still a few goods trains pulling loads of oil tankers crossing Brownedge Road (Brownedge Lane) that occasionally stopped us if I'd gone to school on the 113 bus.  Passenger services had long since stopped and when the goods trains had also ceased, the rail company ('British Rail') quite quickly removed the infrastructure.  This was definitely the rails and sleepers, but perhaps not the ballast straight away.  From that point forward, it became the playground of a few of the local children, myself included. Brownedge Level Crossing, Bamber Bridge around 1905 At that point, we often would have adventures in the remains of Todd Lan

The Delph in the River Ribble by Avenham Park

The Delph in the River Ribble by Avenham Park Over the years, I have always been slightly confused when people mention the the necessity of 'divers' when investigating things in the River Ribble by Avenham Park, adjacent to the Old Tram Road bridge.  However, after being momentarily perplexed by it, my train of thought often moved onto something else.  More recently, when researching the history of the Lancaster Canal, I was led to an account of divers (again) fishing something out of the River Ribble in the same location.  This time, I decided to figure out why they would be needed. The answer is that there is a significantly deep 'Delph' in the River Ribble.  Strangely, whilst I thought that word was generally part of everyone's vocabulary, it turn out not to be.  I didn't pop up in online dictionaries when I did a web search.  Relatively locally, I have had conversations with people about 'Eccy Delph' (Eccleston Delph).  It turns out that Delph  comes

FAREWELL TO THE SUMMIT - Lancaster Canal Summit Branch and Tramroad

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

Fall Of Thirteen Arches of the Ribble Viaduct on the Preston Extension of the East Lancashire Railway.

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