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Local Information for Preston

Preston is a city and local government district in North West England. It is the administrative centre of Lancashire, and is on the River Ribble. Preston was granted the status of a city in 2002, becoming England's 50th city in the 50th year of Queen Elizabeth's reign.

Among other things, Preston is famous for Preston North End F.C., one of the oldest Football League teams, St Walburge's Church (the tallest church in England designed by Joseph Hansom of Hansom Cab fame, with the third-highest spire at 94 metres), and Europe's second largest bus station (with 79 gates).

The southern part of the district is mostly urbanised but the northern part is quite rural. The current borders came into effect on April 1, 1974, when the Local Government Act 1972 merged the existing county borough of Preston with Fulwood urban district and part of Preston Rural District.

During the Roman period the road from the Setantian port of Neb of the Nese passed one mile north of Preston and intersected the road from Languavallium in Cumberland to Condate in Cheshire in Preston at Tulketh-hall.

In Ripon in 705 the lands near the River Ribble were set on a new foundation, and the parish church was probably erected. Later Edward the Elder passed the lands to cathedral at York and then from successive transfers the lands were passed round between churches, hence the name Priest's Town or Preston. An alternative explanation of the origin of the name is that the Priest's Town refers to a priory set up by St. Wilfrid near the Ribble's lowest ford. This idea is re-inforced by similarity of Preston's crest bearing a lamb with St. Wilfrid's banner (Walsh and Butler 1992).

The strategic location of the city, almost exactly mid-way between Glasgow and London, is demonstrated in that decisive battles of the English Civil War (1643) and the first Jacobite rebellion (1715) were fought in Preston.

In 1825 Preston was in the hundred of Amounderness, in the deanery of Amounderness and the archdeaconry of Richmond. The name of Amounderness is more ancient than the name of any other Wapentake or hundred in the County of Lancaster, and so Preston dates from at least the High Saxon period. Served by the River Ribble, Preston was one of the principal ports of Lancaster. As late as the time of Charles I the monarch demanded a quarter more ship money than from Lancaster and twice as much as from Liverpool.

The 19th Century saw a transformation in Preston from a small market town to a much larger industrial one, as the innovations of the latter half of the previous century such as Richard Arkwright's Water Frame (invented in Preston) brought cotton mills to many Northern English towns. With industrialisation came examples of both oppression and enlightenment.

The town's forward-looking spirit is typified by its being the first English town outside London to be lit by gas. The Preston Gas Company was established in 1815 by, amongst others, a Catholic priest: Fr. Joseph "Daddy" Dunn of the Society of Jesus.

The more oppresive side of industrialisation was seen on Saturday 13th August 1842, when a group of cotton workers demonstrated against the poor conditions in the town's mills. The Riot Act was read and armed troops corralled the demonstrators in front of the Corn Exchange on Lune Street. Shots were fired and four of the demonstrators were killed. A commemorative sculpture now stands on the spot (although the soldiers and demonstrators represented are facing the wrong way). In the 1850s, Karl Marx visited Preston and later described the town as "the next Saint Petersburg"[1].

The Preston Temperance Society, led by Joseph Livesey pioneered the Temperance movement in the 19th Century. Indeed the term Teetotalism is believed to have been coined at one of its meetings. The website of the University of Central Lancashire library has a great deal of information on Joseph Livesey and the Temperance movement in Preston [2].

Preston was designated as part of the Central Lancashire new town in 1970.

The Preston by-pass, opened 5 December 1958, became the first stretch of motorway in the UK and is now part of the M6. It was built to ease traffic congestion in Preston caused by tourists travelling to the popular destinations of Blackpool and The Lake District. In the 1980's, a motorway running around the west of the city which would have been an extension of the M65 running to the M55 was started but never finished. That is the reason that the M55 has no junction 2, because it was reserved for the new western bypass. However, the existing M6 between junctions 30 and 32 was widened extensively between 1993-95 to compensate for this. A new junction, 31A was opened in 1997 to serve a new business park close to the motorway.

Every twenty years, a famous celebration called the Preston Guild takes place in the city. The last Guild celebration took place in 1992 and the next is due in 2012.

The city is home to the University of Central Lancashire. Previously known as Preston Polytechnic, UCLan is now the sixth largest university in the country.

Preston is twinned with Almelo in the Netherlands, Nîmes in France, Recklinghausen in Germany and Kalisz in Poland.

The first Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet in the UK was opened on Fishergate in Preston.

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