Thankfully the rain stayed off yesterday morning as we packed up and
moved camp; the gale force winds which had actually caused lives to be lost
further north had also abated. As we pulled up the levelling blocks from a
tangle of long grass, small squares of particle board, we were reminded yet
again of our overstay. Chris G came over to farewell us, lingering to check out
the photos I had on my phone of the rotten metal that had caused us to hang
about and for us to all try to right the world of its woes, as folk of mature
age are prone to do.
Our trip was a short one, short of forty miles, east on the M58, then
north on the M6. As per normal we had time to fill before arriving at our next
destination before midday, so pulled off into the Charnock Richard service
centre. There we purchased even more decadent delicacies for our morning tea;
Chris is determined to fatten me up. This probably comes of me asking for him
to make another hole in my leather belt; either the belt has stretched or all this
walking is making for good shape.
Our camp is just next door to that previously booked; an excellent
alternative given we had mail waiting for us. We were well set up before the
next front struck the region; weather perfectly suited to staying indoors and
watching the wind up of the Olympic Games.
We rose this morning to more rain and deep puddles across the access
routes. This was to be the worst of our five days here and with limited time,
we chose to spend the day in the city rather than sightsee through misty
drizzle or more severe rain.
Preston is the administrative centre of Lancashire, lying on the
northern bank of the River Ribble. With a population of over 122,000, it is a
significant city. It was granted a Guild Merchant Charter in 1179, giving it
the status of a market town, and textiles have been produced from local wool
since the mid -13th century. These cottage industries remained thus
until the Industrial Revolution.
Preston’s own son, Sir Richard Arkwright, invented the spinning frame
and so the serious manufacture of textiles began, continuing so until the
mid-20th century, when the city’s boomtimes declined in the same
manner as others within the region.
In 1786
John Horrocks had set up the first cotton mill, with his brother Samuel, making
Preston a major industrial centre by 1800. It was John who first saw the
potential for making money from cotton spinning. After working for a spinner in
his Edgeworth near Bolton, he started making his own yarn in his father’s
workshop, leading him to build a factory in Preston in 1791. Samuel quickly
joined his brother in Preston and together they developed the Horrocks’
business. Before John’s death in 1804, they had built seven more cotton
factories.
Development
and industry invites innovation and change and so it was that the Horrocks’
cotton business was superseded in part by new textiles. In 1938 the Essex based
textile company, Courtalds, who had pioneered the commercial production of
viscose rayon, opened their largest rayon factory in Preston where it dominated
the landscape with its two chimneys and two cooling towers for forty years. It
had its own coal-fired power station and water supply from an underground reservoir
and employed 2,000 until it closed in 1980.
It is the
Courtald factory that is credited with reshaping Preston society; when it
relocated some of their Coventry employees in 1957, they brought the first
Muslim men to permanently settle in the city.
Another first for this rather unimposing city was the founding of the Temperance
Society by a local man, Joseph Livesay, who published England’s first newspaper
for abstainers in 1834. It is said that the word “teetotal” came from a
stammering friend of Livesay’s when he tried to take the pledge of “t-t-total
abstinence”.
One celebrated native of Preston was Edith Rigby, born Raynor in 1872, one of a
doctor’s seven children and educated in North Wales. She was an agitator in the
days of the suffragettes and surely must have been an embarrassment to her
doctor husband, or maybe his pride and joy? She was apparently the first woman
in Preston to ride a bicycle and founded the Preston branch of the Women’s
Social and Political Union. She planted a bomb in the Liverpool Cotton Exchange
and burnt down Sir William Lever’s Holiday bungalow at Rivington (he of Port
Sunshine fame). She took to tarring and feathering the Earl of Derby statue in
Miller Park to protect the identity of the mystery culprit. Even in her
more mature years, she did not let up. Appalled at the apparent neglect of archaeological
discoveries at Bleasdale in 1930, she wrote a passionate letter to the
Lancashire Evening Post calling for action.
As a result the Bleasdale Preservation Committee and fund were set up to
support work at the Circle. Their efforts resulted in a professional excavation
between 1933 and 1935.
The guide
of our walking tour in Liverpool mentioned a theory that had been raised
concerning the origins of Paul McCartney’s famous hit, Eleanor Rigby. It was
suggested that somewhere in the depths of the local history subconsciously
gleaned during his upbringing, the name stuck, although not quite correctly,
and hit a note when he was playing with names and sounds and tunes. It’s a good
story anyway. When quizzed on the matter, he was unable to recall any better
explanation. Perhaps it was some fuzzy recollection of Edith Rigby?
Anyway, it
was this Preston to which we headed, first to the Portway Park and Ride down
near the old port, then on to the bus the short distance into town. As it
turned out, we probably could have found acceptable parking closer to the
centre, but then the rain and the unfamiliar streets would surely have made the
trip less pleasant.
Asking
directions, we made our way through the pouring rain up to the covered market
place, where today there were just the regular stalls in the closed area, and
the beginnings of a car-boot style market in the roofed areas. It was all
rather dreary and down at heel, and so we pressed on seeking the Information
Centre, on through the streets, tugging our raincoat hoods close about our
heads as was everyone else, noting our fellow shoppers were all as drab and
uninteresting as we were, but then rain is a great leveller.
At the
library I was signed up as a card holder for the sole purpose of using the
printer; such bureaucratic nonsense if you ask me! Armed with our hard copies,
we asked direction to the Information Centre and the local branch of our bank.
After a little thought, we were directed to the Town Hall where there might be
the former, and told that there was no local branch of the said bank here in
Preston. I googled the nearest branch and listed the possibilities so that we
might call in the next few days if our wheels took us in that direction.
The lovely
man in the Town Hall advised us that there was no Information Centre either,
but gave us a tear off map which was all we were after anyway. Following his
direction we faced the weather once more and found a hairdresser, the
walk-in-without-an-appointment variety, where I had months of mop shorn off my
head.
After a
coffee at Maccas, we found a sheltered bench near the bus station and ate our
lunch, watching the rather down at heel types make their wet and weary way
through the arcade. We figured that the more impressive residents of the city
must all be either busy at their desks, or in their workshops, or sensibly
waiting the rain out in the shelter of their homes.
With our
hunger sated, but our clothes wet despite our raincoats, we then made our way
to the fine Greek Revivalist Harris Museum and Art Gallery. Working from the
top floor down, we spent a few hours enjoying the excellent but small art
collection, and below, the small but well curated museum.
There was a
special exhibition in the art gallery titled “Michael Foreman: Painting with
Rainbows” which I enjoyed immensely. Michael Foreman is both and illustrator
and author of children’s books, and I
was tempted to gather up a pile of his books to take back to our younger
grandchildren, but remembered in time that books are heavy and luggage restrictions
would make a nonsense of this idea. I shall just have to look out for his work
in New Zealand.
Half of the
museum is given over to a vast collection of glass and ceramic treasures which
I was not interested in, but I was keen to find out more about the local
history. By the time we emerged from the building, the rain had eased and we
were able to walk down the streets, now busy with uncloaked shoppers, toward
our rendez-vous point for the bus. As we
did so, we came upon our bank, contrary to the advice we had been given
earlier, and so we were able to complete the business that had started with the
mail sent through to our caravan hostess’s mother by Chris’s brother and added
to with the printing done earlier in the day.
We arrived
at the rail station at the very moment the correct bus was loading, so our
return home was perfectly timed and without drama. Despite the rain and the
various advice we had received during the day, we had managed to achieve
everything we set out to do, including a very severe haircut that my husband is
not at all keen on.
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