My Lancashire - My accounts of the local area

THE ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS 1862 When writing a previous post, about the history of horse racing around the Preston area, I had been looking for pictorial evidence.  This was always likely to be in the form of illustrations.  Whilst photography had been invented, as I understand it, as far back as 1822.  However, photographs would be used in publications, such as newspapers, until the 1890s.  When researching Penwortham Holme, I was led to a picture of an agricultural show that took place as part of the Preston Guild in 1862.  This in turn led me to a full piece about the occasion in the 'Illustrated London News' from that era.   The Illustrated London News was founded by Herbert Ingram and first published on Saturday 14th May 1842.  It was the world's first illustrated weekly news magazine.  It was published weekly for most of its existence.  However, it switched to a less frequent publication schedule in 1971, and eventually ceased publication in 2003.  The company contin

Abandoned Houses in Ulnes Walton near Leyland in Lancashire - Low House Strictly speaking, I suppose the word in the title should be 'Buildings' as opposed to 'Houses', however, the main place of interest is 'Low House'.  From a historical point of view, that location seems to have been in existence for an number of centuries.  At this stage, it seems unlikely that the abandoned buildings represent the original property.  Web searches are not revealing any great detail at this point. The journey starts when I began watching urban and historical exploration videos on YouTube.  In the past, I had always been interested in exploring, and finding out more information about the places I had visited.  Watching the videos opened up a number of opportunities to find out about new places.  On this occasion, it was more about the tools and methods of finding 'stuff', as opposed to somebody suggesting a location on a video. I had learned about some old maps hosted

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