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The Park Hotel. Miller Park.

Looks like it was Syke Brook that ran through Winkley Square.
The brooks that form the perimeters of Penwortham can still be walked. However not a single glimpse of fresh free flowing water can be seen in Preston anymore. Every water course has been culverted .
 
These maps are fascinating, especially the side by side mode. Thanks for sharing

I've learnt a bit about Higher Walton's geography that I never knew. It looks like the River Darwen may have flowed differently in the past and gone around the back of what is now the playing fields.
 
Be class wouldn't it. I always think what it'd be like just having a stroll about in the 30s, 40s and 50s..... even just for one day.

Loads of old buildings in Preston that I look at and think 'wonder what it would have been like in heyday, busy, people buzzing around chatting going about their business etc'

Nowadays you get Callum, Reece, Aidon etc thinking they're badmen, smashing shit up, being nob heads, filming it on their phones for 'likes' on social media.
My mum was telling me yesterday how she grew up in an area of very poor quality housing called 'Everton Gardens' which was near where the Bus Station/Buckingham Bingo stands today. It was cleared as part of the slum clearance programme in, I think, the 1930s and the residents were moved to some of the newer council estates that were just being built in Preston at the time - my mum/grandparents were re-housed on the part of the Moor Nook Estate at Ulswater road, which was in itself demolished to make way for newer houses in the 1980s.
 
My mum was telling me yesterday how she grew up in an area of very poor quality housing called 'Everton Gardens' which was near where the Bus Station/Buckingham Bingo stands today. It was cleared as part of the slum clearance programme in, I think, the 1930s and the residents were moved to some of the newer council estates that were just being built in Preston at the time - my mum/grandparents were re-housed on the part of the Moor Nook Estate at Ulswater road, which was in itself demolished to make way for newer houses in the 1980s.


You're Mum was bang on the money, as per this map from pre WW2:

https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/sid...3.76080&lon=-2.69746&layers=168&right=BingHyb

'Everton Gardens' is right there, the centre of the street basically running parallel to just in front of the west side of where the bus station is now (what is now become an urban park thing).

Interestingly where Buckingham Bingo and that is now was a theatre, next to that was a Brewery, and a skating rink a little up the street also. Even a fire station knocking about in there also.
 
The old town hall which burnt down in 1947

town-hall.jpg


Construction of the docks

docks.jpg



View up Church Street

church-street.jpg


View up Fishergate towards the old Town Hall with the Church in the background

fishergate.jpg
 
Well you could knock me down with Sid's feather duster 😂
Euro mentioned differant gardens on Winkley Square,Sid finds a picture of it,1881 mentions the fountain in the picture ,I mentioned it's water came from an old stream that was cultervated.
Well that turned out to be Sykes Brook and it ran through Winkley Square but also down Garden St, always thought that the tramway bridge crossed a road, no, now it looks 100% like that bridge crossed the Sykes Brook. :eek: many thanks to you all:)
The Tramway had been built to link the two portions of the Lancaster Canal across the deep valley of the River Ribble and was opened on 1st June 1803.
The culverting of the Syke in 1812

 
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Well you could knock me down with Sid's feather duster 😂
Euro mentioned differant gardens on Winkley Square,Sid finds a picture of it,1881 mentions the fountain in the picture ,I mentioned it's water came from an old stream that was cultervated.
Well that turned out to be Sykes Brook and it ran through Winkley Square but also down Garden St, always thought that the tramway bridge crossed a road, no, now it looks 100% like that bridge crossed the Sykes Brook. :eek: many thanks to you all:)
I often wonder, in generations to come, that this little forum will actually become a very good historical reference resource.

We have our arguments on here but some of the discussions and facts that people find are absolutely fantastic. This thread being yet another of them.
 
I often wonder, in generations to come, that this little forum will actually become a very good historical reference resource.

We have our arguments on here but some of the discussions and facts that people find are absolutely fantastic. This thread being yet another of them.
Well said Raefil:) so pleasing that I am not alone remembering our Proud Preston's past but lets not forget it was very hard times for the Preston working class and to quote the follwing from The Lay of the Land.
The Syke was increasingly being used as an open sewer,:eek: and it should be to the west of the factories which were being built.
The prevailing winds blow from the west so the air over the square would be cleaner if it didn’t pass through and carry smoke from chimneys.
And it is not arguments, it's debates my friend :)
 
This^^. For far too long - back to back houses and handloom weavers in cellars.
At a time when more than 80 cotton mills were in production in Preston, within hours two families had been left without their bread winner as the perils of life in the cotton mills, where machinery of a dangerous nature was often left unguarded, struck home. :(
 
I think it was the Goodiers who had the job of excavation and carrying away the soil when the docks was built.

And I was told that my grandmother walked across the bottom of the docks before they let the water in, and that the base is actually paved in stone slabs.....
 
At a time when more than 80 cotton mills were in production in Preston, within hours two families had been left without their bread winner as the perils of life in the cotton mills, where machinery of a dangerous nature was often left unguarded, struck home. :(

My maternal grandmother worked at the mill on Inkerman Street between Eldon Street and Roebuck Street. She retired unmutilated but stone deaf. I think it was the 'Tacklers' who removed obstructions from the looms - while they were running of course. For these men losing a finger was all in a day's work ☹.

Edit: The mill might have been in Parker Street or even De Lacy Street. Soz.
 
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