Preston-Then and Now.
1813-1893.
The Changes of Half a Century.
No. II.
 |
| Fishergate in Preston circa 1903 |
~
PRESTON-THEN AND NOW: 1813-1893.
THE CHANGES OF HALF A CENTURY.
No. II
In reference to the Victoria and Queen's Buildings we omitted to say that the site of the latter, on the south side of Fishergate, was formerly fenced off from the street with rough railings, but was afterwards taken up by some wooden buildings, one of which was occupied as an agricultural implement warehouse by Mr. Standing, and the other by Mr. Miller, painter and plumber, until the railway company required the ground., Proceeding, we come next to the handsome stone edifice, the Baptist chapel, erected at a cost of nearly £7,000, at the corner of Charnley-street, from the design of Mr. James Hibbert, architect, of this town, and opened in 1858. It has two beautiful rose windows, the principal one being in the front elevation of the building, which is a conspicuous ornament of this part of the town. Nearly opposite, the Theatre Royal presents a front than which nothing could be more unlike the original, an ugly brick structure with an insignificant portico. The present front, which includes two handsome shops and the principal entrance, stands about 25 feet in advance of the original building, which was erected at the beginning of the century by a company of share-holders. It was purchased by Mr. Parkinson, an operatic singer, in 1869, and the new front and various internal alterations and improvements are due to his enterprise, which unfortunately was not successful; and the Theatre is now the property of a building club. The handsome shops nearly opposite to the Theatre, occupied by Mr. Norwood and others, like so many in all the principal thoroughfares, of Preston, were till within the last few few years private dwelling-houses with short flights of steps and palisades. At the north-east corner of Mount-street, before the shops of Mr. Robinson, bookseller, and those adjoining were built, stood a house inhabited, and we believe owned, by Old Betty Redhead, dealer in cakes and toffee, a very pronounced Tory of the old original "True Blue" school. In season and out of season it was "Church and State" and "the Cuerden Cock" with Betty-a singular character, "loquacious, loud, and turbulent of tongue." She died in 1866, aged. 91. At the General Election of 1852, the last at which Mr. R. T. Parker, of Cuerden Hall ("the Cuerden Cock"), was a candidate, and successful too, he walked up Fishergate, arm in arm with Old Betty, from her house to the Bull Hotel, and she seemed mightily pleased with the honour.
They were a couple to be remembered-she with her enormous mob cap, and print gown tucked up through the pocket-hole, and fairly grinning with delight; and he, spruce as a young beau, in blue frock coat, white hat, white trousers, and a "canary" vest-long previously the conventional rig of the staunch True Blue-enjoying with unfeigned pleasure the astonishment of the spectators at him and his incongruous companion. The old Dispensary, opened in 1809, stood where now stands the Savings Bank. It was a plain building of dressed stone, with iron palisades in front; and when it was decided to transfer its business to the Infirmary, the site was purchased for the present Savings Bank, which was opened in 1872, Mr. Hibbert being the architect. Before the erection of this bank, its business was transacted in a small stone building adjoining the Wesleyan Chapel in Lune-street, specially erected for that purpose in 1842. It was afterwards occupied as the Union Bank, and is now the Wesleyan Literary Institute, the directors of the Union Bank having been so successful that they found larger premises necessary, and built the handsome bank at the corner of Winckley-street, on a site previously occupied by the shop of the late Mr. Stephens, draper.
A noticeable feature of the town, which disappeared many years since, was the square space at the north-west corner of Chapel-street, formerly the burial ground of a Congregational Chapel, erected there about a century ago. On that ground now stand the offices of Messrs. Myres, Veevers, and Myres, architects and surveyors, and the shop of Mrs. Maudsley, fishmonger, at the corner of the street. A glance down Chapel-street gives a sight of the recently re-edified Roman Catholic Chapel of St. Wilfrid, which had previously undergone two or three improvements. Just past Chapel-street, as we proceed up Fishergate, we come to the imposing structure occupied by the Preston Banking Company, erected in 1857, from the design of the late Mr. J. H. Park, elder brother of Mr. W. P. Park, J.P. This bank stands on the site of two houses of a terrace-a line of fine private residences between Chapel-street and Winckley-street. The terrace was railed off from the footpath, and was gained at each end by three or four stone steps; but it had disappeared before the erection of the bank, on the transformation of the remainder of the houses into the present shops. While in this neighbourhood we pass down Winckley-street to the Square, where, in 1844, the foundation stone of the Literary and Philosophical Institution, including the Winckley Club, was laid by the late Mr. John Addison, Mayor, with the Masonic ceremony.
The building was designed by Mr. Welch, then a well-known architect in Preston, and opened in 1846. The adjoining Grammar School in Cross-street was built in 1841, also from the design of Mr. Welch; and the whole of this block of buildings was the property of shareholders, from whom, in 1860, the Grammar School was purchased by the Corporation for £1,527; and the remainder of the pile in 1868 for £1,500. The Italian Villa, at the south-west corner of Cross-street, was designed by Mr. Latham, architect, and built for Mr. William Ainsworth, J.P., cotton spinner, who at that time had a mill in Cotton-court, Church-street.
A statue of Sir Robert Peel, facing Cross-street, is the work of the late Mr. T. Duckett, of Avenham-road, and was erected by subscription at a cost of upwards of £600. It was unveiled by Alderman Monk, Mayor, in 1852. On the base of the pedestal may be seen a narrow channel cut in the stone; it marks the erasure of the inscription, "Thomas Monk, Mayor, 1852," who, in December, 1857, was charged at the Police-court with forging, or procuring to be forged, the will of Edmund Turner, a reed maker, of St. Paul's square. The only magistrate on the bench was Mr. William Ainsworth, by whom he was committed for trial at the Lancaster Assizes in the following February. He was there sentenced by Baron Martin to penal servitude for life; but was liberated in May, 1868. He at once returned to Preston, and until his death, which occurred a few years ago, had a pretty good practice among former patients. The evidence of a similar erasure to that above-mentioned, is visible in front of the fire brigade station in Tithe Barn-street, which was also opened by Mr. Monk during his mayoralty. Something may charitably
be said for him in mitigation of the severity of public ensure. He was thrust upward by injudicious friends into positions for which he was totally unqualified, either personally or pecuniarily, and it was doubtless grinding impecuniosity that drove him to the commission of the crime for which he was so heavily punished--
From no affliction are the poor exempt;
They think each eye surveys them with contempt.
Unmanly poverty subdues the heart,
Cankers each wound, and sharpens every dart.
On the west side of Winckley-square, the road leading from Garden-street to the railway station-a portion of the ancient Syke-and the waste ground on each side, were transferred by the Corporation in 1872 to the London and North-Western Railway Company for a part of the old tramway, extending from the northern entrance into Avenham Park to the end of what is now known as the Long Walk, on the south side of the river. The underground passage of the railway follows the line of the old Syke, which ran into West Cliff. The road and land thus acquired by the railway company were very soon used by them in enlargement of their goods station, and fenced off from Garden-street. The residents in Winckley-square and all the Avenham district were thus deprived of their near cut to the station, and forced to make a detour through Fishergate, until the way by the Park Hotel gallery in East Cliff was opened. That road we suppose, is used by the public only on sufferance. A few steps beyond Winckley-street, in Fishergate, the branch bank of the Lancaster Bank, built in 1856 from the design of Mr. J. H. Park, fronts the new Post Office, which was opened in 1870, and stands where for many years had been established the private bank of Messrs. Roskell, Arrowsmith and Co. A shop adjoining it, at the corner of the passage, was for some time tenanted by the late Mr. E. C. Buller, Catholic bookseller. That bank stopped payment in 1868. Before the present Post Office was built the business was conducted in the building in Lancaster-road, now occupied by Mr.. Beck, wholesale draper. It was erected in 1854 as the permanent home of the postal business, which, however, in 16 years became too large to be conveniently transacted even there. One of several houses below the Parish Church (since converted into shops) had for long years before this been a sufficient post office for Preston, and was conducted by women, the last of whom, Miss Wilson, died about forty years ago, and Mr. Drennan, from Liverpool, was appointed postmaster, which office he held until recently, when he was superannuated. There was a Post-office on a very small scale even before that in Church-street, at the house now occupied by Mrs. Winn, butcher, in Lancaster-road; and the slip in the wall for the reception of letters may still be seen near the door. The premises adjoining the Post-office in Lancaster-road were some time tenanted by the Conservative Club, formed principally through the zeal and exertions of Mr. W. P. Park, J.P., who found willing coadjutors in the gentlemen now prominent members of the party; and the club remained there until the formation of Guildhall-street, for which some low-roofed shops fronting Fishergate had to make way. Then was erected the present club-house of Old English aspect a style, as stated to the writer at the time, "typical of Conservatism." The foundation stone was laid by the late Mr. Hermon, M.P., in 1877. The building was completed in 1878, and opened by the Right Hon. R. A. (now Lord) Cross, who was M.P. for Preston from 1859 to 1862. While noticing the new features of this locality, we must draw attention to the great improvement in the Congregational place of worship formerly spoken of as Cannon-street Chapel. It now, from an addition to each end of the building, occupies the whole space between Cannon-street and Guildhall-street, wherein is the principal entrance, a fine Grecian portico. To return to Fishergate: In 1872, Mr. J. B. Booth laid the foundation stone of the palatial Gas Offices contiguous to the Post-office, and the company removed to them in 1877 from premises in Glover-street. The new offices, built from the design of Messrs. Garlick, Park and Sykes, occupy the site of two ordinary shops, with small old-fashioned windows, that at the corner of the passage being tenanted by the late Mr. Bailey, printer and stationer, who about 1856-7 started a weekly newspaper, which he named the "Preston Standard." It had but a brief existence. Mr. Gillett, joiner and cabinet maker, was, we believe, the last tenant of that shop before it fell into the possession of the Gas Company. Adjoining the Shelley Arms Hotel stood a little low-roofed thatched cottage of most primitive appearance, and perhaps about two hundred years old, or more. A tall man might almost have looked in at the bedroom windows. It was the freehold property of, and tenanted by, two old maiden ladies named Barton, who over and over again had been offered for it, fabulous sums of money, which were always firmly refused, their invariable answer to the offers being to the effect that they had lived in it all their lives and would die in it; and they kept their word. When the last of them joined her departed sister, about 1870, the ancient tenement was bought by the late Mr. H. P. Watson, auctioneer and sheriff's officer, who erected upon the site the present building as auction and salerooms. After his death it was for a time occupied by the Preston Reform Club, until the handsome premises in Chapel-street were erected on the site of the
old County Office, a large house once occupied as the Vicarage; and Mr. H. Bannister, draper,
became the tenant of the whilom club-house.
Our next noteworthy object is the substantial stone building in the Italian style, with ornamental front, nearly opposite Cannon-street, erected from the design of Councillor J. J. Myres for the late Mr. G. Toulmin, as the publishing office and printing works of the "Preston Guardian." It stands on the site of one of the oldest public-houses in Preston, the Old Legs of Man, and is one of the most striking features of Fishergate. It was first occupied at the beginning of 1873; the publishing office being removed from the shop now occupied by Mrs. Cartwright, optician, and the printing works from premises in Cannon-street, now the "Chronicle" printing office.
PRESTON-THEN AND NOW: 1843-1893.
Date: Saturday, Mar. 11, 1893
Publication: Preston Chronicle
Gale Primary Sources, British Library Newspapers:
Comments
Post a Comment