The Ribble Way. Dennis Kelsall

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      Despite the construction of the A59 bypass road, Penwortham New Bridge remains busy and is best crossed on its northern side at the traffic lights. The onward way hugs the riverbank along Broadgate, Riverside and then successively at the edge of a sports field, Miller Park and Avenham Park. Beyond that is a playing field, after which The Boulevard takes you past the outflow of the River Darwen, on the river’s opposite bank, to another of Preston’s main arteries, the A6 road at Walton Bridge.

       PRESTON

      Historically, Preston was the lowest point at which the Ribble could be bridged, and certainly it has no shortage of crossing points today. Upriver of Penwortham New Bridge is the graceful five-arched Penwortham Old Bridge, still standing but closed to traffic, while just beyond it stand the gaunt piers festooned with a jumble of service pipes and cables that once carried the West Lancashire Railway from Southport. Further on, the high and much-widened bridge overshadowing the Continental pub carries the West Coast main railway line into Preston Station, which lies just a few hundred yards up the hill to the north. The next bridge also served a railway, this time from Blackburn and the east, but trains are now routed round by the main line and the bridge is left for pedestrians, as is the next one at the far side of Avenham Park. In a way this last bridge is the most interesting, for it was built to carry the tramway that connected the two halves of the Lancaster Canal, and which ran from a basin in Aqueduct Street, northwest of the city centre, to Johnson’s Hillock beyond Whittle-le-Woods, a distance of some 8 miles (12.9km). The trucks were horse-drawn for most of its length, but stationary steam engines were employed at either side of the river to haul and lower trucks along straight inclines to the bridge. The present metal structure dates from 1860 and replaces a wooden one erected in 1802.

       Penwortham Old Bridge

      Some 40 yards before Walton Bridge, where you meet the main road, is the site of Old Ribble Bridge, which on 17 August 1648 was contested in the struggle for control of Preston during the Civil War. After a three-day battle Charles I’s forces were finally defeated by the Roundheads, and tradition has it that afterwards Cromwell retired to the Unicorn Inn by Darwen Bridge to plan his subsequent strategy.

      Preston claims Saxon foundation in the seventh century, and with charters later granted under Henry I and Henry II, was undoubtedly a medieval town of some importance. It sent a representative to Parliament from as early as 1295, but sadly no buildings from those early beginnings have survived. The only memorial to Preston’s several ancient gates is in street names such as Fishergate, Friargate, Bishopgate and Stoneygate.

      In his Tour of the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724–6) Daniel Defoe remarked that it ‘has a great many gentlemen’, but it was the industrialisation of the later 18th century that moulded the town we see today. Richard Arkwright invented his water frame for spinning cotton in Stoneygate, paving the way for a textile industry that helped Britain dominate world trade throughout the Victorian era.