"Now Picture That" - Preston - Old Engraving

"Now Picture That" is a series of posts which share old engravings and photos of Britain to help you imagine how things looked in times gone by.  

This image looks from Penwortham Hill (site of an ancient, disappeared castle & abbey) across the River Ribble to the town of Preston.   The chimneys of the cotton works are a noticeable part of the town's skyline, but note also the windmills.   Early cotton production, and notably  Richard Arkwright's water frame, needed a source of power to keep it going.  In the absence of any fast moving streams in the area hand, horse or windmill were used.  Today only one base of these windmills survives at Craggs Row Mill.

From a Steel Engraving by J. Harwood & R. Winkles.

Go to www.obelisktours.com  to discover more of Preston on our FREE tour of the ancient market place:

This FREE tour explores centuries of change around Preston’s Flag Market.  We find the remnants of Bull baiting, the stories behind the ancient Obelisk, the religious meaning behind the Lamb and the Flag, and the transformation of the Shambles.   Our tour discovers the majesty of the Harris Museum and the Age of Pericles, the ‘skyscraper’ of Preston, and Edwardian grandeur.  

Or one of our faith tours of Preston and the beginnings of British Mormonism:

 We follow in the footsteps of the first LDS missionaries to Britain and discover Joseph Smith's dentist, the cursed stone, the 1842 riot, the powerful Reverend Wilson, Heber C. Kimball's amazing prophecy, LDS shorthand, and the Deseret Alphabet. We visit all of the well-known sites including their lodgings (where a host of evil spirits attacked them), the River Ribble (where the first British baptisms took place, the Vauxhall Chapel Site (where they first preached) and the cockpit site (where the first British Conference was held in 1837).  We also unveil the poverty, the opposition and the beginnings of the Nauvoo Sunstone.