Preston St John, Lancashire Genealogy

England Lancashire  Lancashire Parishes

Parish History
PRESTON (St. John), a parish, and the head of a union, in the hundred of Amounderness, N. division of the county of Lancaster; comprising the borough of Preston, which has a separate jurisdiction; the six townships of Barton, Elston, Fishwick, Haighton, Ribbleton, and Lea with Ashton, Ingol, and Cottam; and the chapelries of Broughton, and Grimsargh with Brockholes; the whole containing, in the year 1841, 53,482 inhabitants, of whom 50,073 were in the borough, 21 miles (S. by E.) from Lancaster, and 217 (N. W. by N.) from London. This place is of as high Saxon antiquity as any town in the county. At the period when Ribchester sank into decay, Preston rose into consequence, and became the principal port of Lancashire; and it is supposed that, having been the abode of ecclesiastics as capital of the district of Amounderness, it obtained the appellation of Priest's town, of which the present name may be a contraction. Though it is difficult to ascertain its precise origin, it was unquestionably a place of considerable importance prior to the Conquest, soon after which it was granted to Tosti, fourth son of Godwin, Earl of Kent. In 1307, the town was burnt, and nearly levelled with the ground, by the Scottish army under Robert Bruce; and in 1333, Edward III. passed through it on his way to Halidown Hill, where he defeated the Scots with the loss of 20,000 men, and took the regent Douglas prisoner. The monarch, in recompense for the assistance he derived from the inhabitants, invested the corporation with several valuable privileges. During the war between the houses of York and Lancaster, the Earl of Derby raised considerable supplies of troops here for the service of the Lancastrian cause.

Seal and Arms. Soon after the commencement of the parliamentary war, the town was taken by Sir John Seaton, a majorgeneral in the republican army, but it was almost immediately retaken by James, Earl of Derby; the battle on this latter occasion raged for about an hour, with dubious success, but at length the garrison surrendered, and the earl, apprehending that the place might again fall into the hands of the parliamentarians, demolished the works. In 1644, on the return of Prince Rupert into Lancashire, after the battle of Marston-Moor, the mayor and several of the principal inhabitants became the victims of their adherence to the cause of the parliament. In 1648, a fierce engagement took place near Preston, between the English and Scottish allied forces commanded by the Duke of Hamilton and Sir Marmaduke Langdale, and the parliamentarian troops under Cromwell, in which the former were defeated, and the duke and his officers, who had retired into the town, were compelled to effect their escape by crossing the river Ribble at the ford below Walton Bridge. Throughout the whole of the civil war the town of Preston suffered materially. In 1715, the party in the interest of the Pretender obtained possession of the place, which they endeavoured to fortify against the assault of the king's forces; but being attacked suddenly by General Wills, aided by the subsequent arrival of General Carpenter with a party of dragoons, they were compelled, after an obstinate resistance, to surrender at discretion. The town suffered much also during this contest, a considerable part of it being burnt by the inhabitants, who were in the interest of the king, to aid the movements of the besiegers, and many of the houses of those who assisted the rebels being given up to plunder after the town was taken. The Lords Widdrington, Derwentwater, and Nairn, were sent prisoners to London, where they were condemned and executed; and sixteen of the rebels were hanged on Gallows' Hill, at Preston. The rebels again made their appearance in 1745, and attempted to intrench themselves here; but on the approach of the royal forces under the Duke of Cumberland, they made their escape a few hours before the duke's arrival. The town is pleasantly situated on an eminence rising from the north bank of the river Ribble, over which are Walton and Penwortham bridges, the former a neat structure of three arches, leading from the London road, erected in 1782; and the latter a handsome bridge of five arches, leading from the Liverpool road, built by act of parliament in 1759. A magnificent viaduct for the North-Union railway also crosses the river. The streets are spacious, and well paved; the houses are neatly and substantially built, and many of them are of large dimensions. Numerous dwelling-houses have lately been built in various parts of the town; new streets have been formed, new mills, factories, and public buildings been erected, and there are at present a number of houses in course of completion. In 1832 a company procured an act of parliament for supplying the town with water; the supply is chiefly collected at Thornley, Dilworth, Alston, and Grimsargh, and at the last place are very large reservoirs whence the water is conducted in stone drains or conduits to another reservoir at Ribbleton, 60 feet above the average level of the town, and then in iron pipes to the houses and mills: the total cost was £45,000. The Preston Gas Company, established in 1815, and incorporated by act of parliament in 1839, was the first projected for lighting any provincial town. The original capital was £2000; in 1846 the capital had been increased to £52,500. The company have a manufacturing station in Glover-street, another in Upper Lawson-street, and a gas-holder station in Walker-street: there are twelve gas-holders at the three stations. The environs, in which are many handsome villas inhabited by opulent families, abound with richly diversified scenery, and the high grounds afford extensive and interesting prospects. Near the town are also several pleasant promenades, the principal being Avenham Walk, belonging to the corporation, by whom it has been recently much enlarged; and the Marsh, along the margin of the river, by which an ancestor of Sir Walter Scott, with his comrades, escaped to Liverpool during the siege of Preston in 1715. The Library was founded by R. Shepherd, Esq., twice mayor for the borough, who in 1761 endowed it with the interest of £1000 for its augmentation, and with the interest of £200 as a salary to the librarian. The Preston Literary and Philosophical Institution was established in November, 1840, to promote the cultivation of science, the arts, &c., and has since been combined with the Palatine Library. It now possesses a collection exceeding 3000 volumes; the museum is rich in wellpreserved specimens of British birds, and has a fine series of shells, fossils, and minerals, with philosophical apparatus for the illustration of lectures. An elegant building in the Tudor style, from designs by Mr. Welch, was completed in 1846, at a cost of about £4000, for the purposes of this society. There are also a law society; a mechanics' institute, for which a handsome edifice in the Grecian style has been just raised; two principal newsrooms, various book societies, and the Winckley Club. The theatre, a neat and well-arranged building, erected by a proprietary in 1802, is opened occasionally; and assemblies are held in a handsome suite of rooms, built at the expense of the late Earl of Derby. The trade, till within the last half century, chiefly consisted of the manufacture and sale of linen-cloth, which, from a petition of the mayor and corporation to parliament, for preventing the exportation of Irish linen to the colonies, and of Scotch linen into Ireland, appear to have been for ages the staple trade of the town and neighbourhood for twenty miles round. The manufacture of cotton goods, however, is now the principal employment of the inhabitants, having been greatly extended by John Horrocks, Esq., to whose enterprise the town is mainly indebted for its prosperity. There are 50 factories, many of them upon a very large scale, and which are all worked by machinery impelled by steam; the raw cotton consumed in a year amounts to 150,000 bales, the whole brought from Liverpool, and of the goods manufactured, the greater portion is sold to the Manchester merchants, and the remainder sent to London or to foreign markets. Three flax-mills are in operation: machine-making is extensively carried on; and besides other branches of labour, there are three considerable iron-foundries, and a large steam-mill for sawing timber. At spring tides, vessels of 150 tons' burthen, or of a draught of twelve feet, can navigate the river to Preston Marsh, where are convenient quays and extensive warehouses for bonding: vessels of larger draught come up only to the out-port of Lytham. By an act of parliament passed in the 46th of George III., commissioners were appointed for bettering the navigation; and buoys have since been placed to mark the navigable channels. The river is now undergoing further improvement, agreeably with an act obtained in 1838 by a company who subscribed a capital of £50,000, since augmented by upwards of £4000; and great advantages are expected from their exertions: the works are under the direction of Messrs. Robert Stevenson and Sons, of Edinburgh. A lighthouse has been erected at the entrance to the Ribble. The river is supposed by Dr. Whitaker to have been formerly navigable to Ribchester; and the discovery in that neighbourhood of anchors, and of the hull of a larger vessel than could now be floated up so high, seems to confirm the opinion. The port of Preston includes Fleetwood, Lytham, Freckleton, and Hesketh: a few ships sail to foreign parts, and a considerable coasting-trade is carried on: upwards of 100 vessels now belong to the port. The number of vessels that entered inwards, in the year ending January 5th, 1846, was 797, of the aggregate burthen of 41,489 tons; and the customs' duties for the same period amounted to £66,949: in the following year, the customs were as much as £83,963. The fishery in the river Ribble is of very ancient establishment; salmon, plaice, eels, and smelts are found in abundance, and of very good quality. Common and cannel coal were formerly brought for the consumption of the town by the river Douglas, which, by an act of parliament obtained in 1727 was made navigable from the estuary of the Ribble to within three miles of Ormskirk, whence a short line parallel with its course, continuing the navigation to Wigan, was constructed by the proprietors of the Leeds and Liverpool canal, who purchased the right of the Douglas navigation. Since the opening of the North-Union and other railways, this branch of the canal trade to Preston has ceased. A branch railway has been made from the North-Union railway to the Preston quays, and coal for export is now shipped from the quays: coal is still conveyed by the Douglas navigation, for shipment on board out-going vessels at Lytham. A tramway worked by horses, and a short canal, connect the Lancaster canal, at Preston, with the Leeds and Liverpool canal. The North-Union railway, opened November 1st, 1838, proceeds in a southern direction from the town to Parkside, where it joins the Liverpool and Manchester line, a distance of 22¼ miles: the Preston station occupies several acres, in Fishergate. The Lancaster railway, completed in June 1840, quits the North-Union in Dock-street, and is 20¼ miles in length. The Longridge tramway, of a single track, was finished about the same time, and is seven miles long; it is used for the conveyance to the town of stone and other goods from Longridge Fell. There is also a railway from Preston to the towns of Lytham, Blackpool, and Fleetwood-on-Wyre. An act was passed in 1844, authorising the construction of a line to Blackburn; another, in 1846, for a line to Ormskirk and Liverpool; and a third, also in 1846, for a railway from Preston to Clitheroe. The market-days are Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, the last principally for corn: the market-place is a spacious well-paved area, in the centre of which is an obelisk supporting gas-lights. The corn exchange, erected in 1822, at the expense of the corporation, is a neat building of brick, with a pediment and cornice of stone; the basement story in front is appropriated as a butter and poultry market, and over it is a woollen-cloth hall, for the accommodation of clothiers at the fairs, and occasionally used as an assembly-room. Behind this building is an open quadrangle, surrounded by a colonnade, and used for a corn-market; above the colonnade is a gallery for the sale of small wares during the fairs, and behind the quadrangle are the pork shambles. The cattlemarket is held at the northern extremity of the town, and that for vegetables in Cheapside and the marketplace. The fairs are, one in the week before the first Sunday after Epiphany, which is a great horse-fair; the spring fair, March 27th, which continues for three days; the summer fair, August 26th, which continues for eight days; and the winter fair, November 7th, which continues for five days. The borough has received numerous charters from successive sovereigns. The first was granted by Henry II., and in 1566, Queen Elizabeth gave a new charter of incorporation, which was confirmed and extended in the 14th and 36th of Charles II., and in the 9th of George IV. The government is now vested in a mayor, twelve aldermen, and thirty-six councillors, under the act 5th and 6th of William IV., cap. 76, which made the municipal boundaries co-extensive with those for parliamentary purposes, and divided the borough into six wards, the township of Fishwick being part of one. The town exercised the elective franchise in the 23rd, 26th, 33rd, and 35th of the reign of Edward I., and in the first of Edward II., but intermitted till the reign of Edward VI., since which time it has regularly sent two members. The mayor and late mayor are justices of the peace, with others appointed by commission. A court of record is held every third Friday, before the recorder, for the recovery of debts to any amount; petty-sessions take place daily at the town-hall. The Preston Guild, or Guild Mercatoria, is a jubilee celebrated every twentieth year: it commences in the last week of August, and continues a fortnight, under the superintendence of the corporation; various processions of the municipal bodies take place, and balls, concerts, dramatic representations, public banquets, and every species of amusement are provided, attracting an immense concourse from the surrounding districts. The quarter-sessions for the hundred of Amounderness, Blackburn, and Leyland, take place here, by adjournment from Lancaster: the quarter-sessions for the county, the meetings of the deputy-lieutenants, and other county meetings, are held in the town; and from its central situation, the offices of the courts of chancery, common pleas, and other courts of the county palatine of Lancaster, are at Preston. The principal officers of the county are, the vice chancellor, the registrar, the cursitors, the seal-keeper, the clerk of the crown, the clerk of the peace, and the prothonotary of the common pleas. The powers of the county debt-court of Preston, established in 1847, extend over the registration-district of Preston. The offices of the under-sheriff and treasurer for the county are also here. The town-hall, a neat brick edifice with quoins and cornices of stone, surmounted by a turret and dome, occupies the site of the ancient moot-hall, which fell down in 1780; it contains portraits of George II., Mr. Pulteney, Mr. Stanley, and Mr. Fazakerley. The sessions-house and house of correction form a capacious building, including every requisite accommodation for the county sessions, and the meetings of the county magistrates; the prison has been much improved, and separate cells have been made. The living is a vicarage, valued in the king's books at £15. 13. 11½.; net income, £665, with a house, built in 1846; patrons, the Trustees of certain estates devised by the benevolent William Hulme, who must present a clergyman educated upon his foundation at Brasenose College, Oxford; impropriators, Sir H. B. Hoghton, Bart., and others. The great tithes of Preston township have been commuted for £124, and the small for £37. The original church was built in the first century after the general establishment of the Christian religion in this country, probably about the year 705; and on the canonization of Wilfrid, Archbishop of York, the edifice was dedicated to that saint: at a later period, it is supposed soon after the Reformation, the Romish saint was discarded, and the church dedicated to St. John. The present body was built about 1770, the tower in 1814, the chancel in 1817, and the choir was renovated in 1823; the style is a mixture of the later Norman and the early English. A handsome organ was presented by the late John Horrocks, Esq., at a cost of 500 guineas; and a beautiful eastern window, by Ballantine, of Edinburgh, has been presented by Thomas German, Esq., mayor of the borough in 1846. St. George's district church, built in 1723, is a cruciform structure of brick, cased with stone in 1845: the living is a perpetual curacy; net income, £150; patron, the Vicar of Preston. The church of the Holy Trinity is a neat stone edifice in the later English style, with a square embattled tower crowned by pinnacles; it was erected in 1814, at an expense of £9080, of which £4000 were donations, and the remainder was raised by general subscription: the living is a perpetual curacy; net income, £160; patron, the Vicar. St. Paul's is a handsome structure, in the later English style, with four turrets; it was erected in 1825, by the Parliamentary Commissioners, at a cost of £6063: the living is also a perpetual curacy; patron, the Vicar; net income, £170. St. Peter's, an edifice with a campanile turret, was built from Rickman's designs, in 1826, at an expense of £6638: the living is a perpetual curacy, in the Vicar's gift; net income, £150, with a house. Christ Church was consecrated October 11th, 1836; it is in the pure Norman style, with two turrets, and cost £3000: the living is a perpetual curacy; net income, £215; patrons, Five Trustees. St. James's was also built in 1836, at a cost of £3000, and is in the early English style, with a campanile turret; a beautiful painted window has been recently presented by John Addison, Esq.: the living is a perpetual curacy; patron, the Vicar; income, £200. The church of St. Mary was built in 1837, at a cost of between £4000 and £5000; the appointment of the minister was originally vested in five trustees, who lately resigned the patronage to the Vicar of Preston; the income, about £130, is derived from the legal endowment and from the pews. St. Thomas's, consecrated 27th June, 1839, is in the Norman style, with a spire, and was built by the trustees of Miss Hyndman's Charity, in whom the patronage is vested: the living is a perpetual curacy; income, £100. At Ashton, Barton, Broughton, and Grimsargh, are other incumbencies. There are places of worship in the town for Independents, Baptists, the Society of Friends, Wesleyans, Primitive Methodists, Swedenborgians, and Unitarians; also four Roman Catholic chapels. Of these chapels, St. Mary's, in Friargate, was erected about 1760; closed in 1793, on St. Wilfrid's being built; and reopened in 1807, St. Wilfrid's being then too small for the congregation. This latter chapel was enlarged in 1839; and in 1847 a small but highly-decorated chapel in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary was completed, opening into it. The chapel of St. Ignatius, opened in 1836, is in the later English style, and cost about £6000, towards which £1100 were raised in weekly subscriptions by the lower classes: it has a beautiful altar of Burnley stone, containing in front and at the sides statues of Our Saviour and the Twelve Apostles, in elaborate canopied niches; the whole the gift of J. F. Anderton, Esq., of Haighton House. The fourth chapel, St. Augustine's, was opened in 1839. There are likewise several Roman Catholic chapels in the vicinity. The free grammar school, which is of uncertain foundation, is partly supported from land given by Richard Worthington. The number of scholars becoming greater than the old school-building would contain, the mayor, recorder, several of the aldermen and councillors, and other gentlemen, erected a spacious stone edifice of a collegiate character, comprising large and handsome schoolrooms, studies, and the various apartments requisite for an extensive institution. The course of instruction is such as to fit the scholars for the universities, or professional or commercial life. A blue-coat school was founded in 1701, by Roger Sudell. In the commercial or middle schools, built in 1844 at the sole expense of Richard Newsham, Esq., of Preston, a sound education is imparted to children of the middle classes: the schools are in Knowsley-street, are built of stone, and present a handsome elevation in the Tudor style; they are capable of accommodating 200 boys and 100 girls. A national school, a capacious brick building, was erected in 1814; and national and infants' schools are supported in connexion with nearly all the churches. There are several Roman Catholic schools, a large day school supported by the Wesleyans, and some other schools. On the 24th May, 1847, the first stone was laid of the Roman Catholic schools of St. Joseph, situated on the Maudlands, and comprising a boys', girls', and infants' schools, with a private chapel in connexion with them: it is proposed to build a public chapel at the same place, dedicated to St. Walburgh. A house of recovery from fever and other contagious diseases, was erected in 1829, on an advantageous site on Preston moor; it is a handsome edifice consisting of a centre and two wings. There are numerous benevolent and benefit societies, and various bequests for distribution among the indigent. The poor-law union comprises 29 parishes or places, and contains a population of 77,189. Preston had anciently a convent of Grey friars, on the northwest of the town, founded by Edward, Earl of Lancaster, son of Henry III.; and an hospital, dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene.

From: A Topographical Dictionary of England by Samuel Lewis (1848), pp. 104-118. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=51112 Date accessed: 02 July 2010.

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