Preston, Church Street 1929
Photo ref: 82677
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Photo ref: 82677
Photo of Preston, Church Street 1929

More about this scene

Preston was always a town that you had to pass through to go north to south, but as the popularity of Blackpool increased, so did the traffic east to west. Liverpool and Manchester both sent traffic over the Ribble bridges and into the dock area to join roads that were full already. After the First World War, it was decided to build a relief road north of the town: that is what we can see here, just after its completion. Our view shows an almost empty Blackpool Road in the Deepdale area of Preston, Moor Park is on the right. Oh! the hours I have sat in traffic jams on this road in the 1970s and 1980s! To see it new and empty fills me with nostalgia.

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A Selection of Memories from Preston

For many years now, we've been inviting visitors to our website to add their own memories to share their experiences of life as it was, prompted by the photographs in our archive. Here are some from Preston

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This was almost certainly a bandstand. There is a bandstand of the right shape marked near the bowling greens on the 1932 25" OS map, surveyed in 1929; this was not marked on the 1912 edition, surveyed 1910. A similar bandstand was built in Centre Vale Park, Todmorden in 1914, which is now listed, see https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1467822 as the only known surviving example of this design. ...see more
During WW2 as a young lad I lived in Ribblesdale Place and Avenham Colonnade and remember that the timber bridge decking was almost completely removed apart from a narrow walkway to hinder invading troop vehicles, After the war we used to visit a little timber shack next to the playing fields at the southern end of the bridge where Stanley Worden sold soft drinks and snacks. Seventy years on I still remember hot Vimto for 2d.!
In my father's diary for 1952 - I have all his diaries here in Frankfurt, Germany, where I have lived since 1973 - there is an entry : Stanley Watson, Governor of the Harris Orphanage, was sent for trial. Unfortunately he did not say why! Does anyone know this and can tell me? We lived in Oak Villa, opposite the Orphanage, and used to see the childen leaving after attending school there. Once, in ...see more
As a child (b1940) I lived at 3 Avenham Colonnade from 1946 until I married in 1964. The late Georgian terrace (built abt 1836) comprises 6 houses built on the slope alongside Avenham Walks ("The Top Walks") . The terrace survives virtually unchanged today, save for the early demolition of the eponymous single storey "Colonnade" in front of the houses which was demolished in the19th century to ...see more