embankments that now contain it served the two-fold purpose of reclaiming fertile land and rendering the river navigable for maritime trade. However, the wash of the tide from the sea and the silt brought down by the river are liable to obstruct the channel, and during the heyday of shipping regular dredging was necessary to maintain sufficient draught for sea-going vessels.
Posts embedded at regular intervals along the riverbank were used to anchor the dredgers, and some still trail mooring cables and chains into the silted banks below.
THE LANCASTER CANAL
A little further upstream on the opposite bank is the outflow of Savick Brook, recently made passable to allow pleasure barges access to the Ribble from the Lancaster Canal. Begun in 1792, the canal had originally been intended to run between Wigan and Kendal via Preston and Lancaster. The Lancaster Canal was constructed to transport coal, textiles, gunpowder and other manufactured commodities as factory production became established in Lancashire.
The plan involved taking the waterway across two major rivers, and although an aqueduct was built spanning the Lune upstream from Lancaster, there was insufficient capital to finance the considerably greater engineering feat of crossing the Ribble valley. As an interim measure the canal company filled the gap between the truncated ends with a tramway to convey cargoes, but the additional costs and delays associated with double-goods-handling meant that the canal failed to achieve its potential, and then the railway age arrived before it could be completed.
The revival of canals as a leisure resource during the latter half of the 20th century reawakened interest in joining the two halves of the Lancaster Canal, and in 1981 the Lancaster Canal Boat Club put forward a scheme to connect the northern part of the canal to the River Ribble along the course of Savick Brook. As Savick Brook is lower than the canal, locks were needed to enter this section of the waterway, with another lock downstream to retain water at low tide, and it was 20 years before the work was finally completed. Now boats can pass into the Ribble from above Preston, go on up the River Douglas to Tarleton, and join the main Leeds and Liverpool Canal system along the Rufford Branch.
PRESTON’S SKYLINE
Even at this distance Preston’s buildings command the horizon. Gone are the tall chimneys of the mills and engineering factories on which the prosperity of the city once relied, and in their place rise the tower blocks of commercial enterprise and housing. Another relative newcomer breaking the skyline is the latticework stadium of Preston’s football team, North End. Preston North End was a founder member of the Football League and is one of the few clubs in the country still playing on its original ground.
It houses the National Football Museum, and even if you are not particularly a fan you will almost certainly find the displays and exhibitions fascinating – you can even try your hand as a ‘guest commentator’.
Some outlines that would have been familiar to travellers passing this way a century ago remain, however, perhaps the most prominent being the white spire of St Walburghe’s Catholic Church.
St Walburghe’s spire was designed by John Hansom, the same man who gave us the Hansom cab. Soaring to 309 feet (94m), it is the third highest in the country and was built by the Jesuits between 1850 and 1854. Although the church is of dun-coloured sandstone, the towering landmark spire stands separate from the church and is of a contrasting white limestone that shines in the sun. It is said that much of the stone for its construction was bought secondhand from the railway companies as they replaced the stone sleepers supporting the track with wood.
Shortly after passing the outlet of Savick Brook on the opposite bank, the raised grazing narrows and the route progresses over stiles across a culvert carrying Mill Brook. Now left to its own devices the bank assumes an unkempt appearance, going first beneath successive power lines carried high above the river on massive gantries, and then past the entrance to Preston Docks on the far bank. After skirting a golf course continue at the fringe of Priory Park to walk beneath the A59 bypass. This is now the lowest crossing of the Ribble, an honour formerly held by Penwortham Bridge a little further upstream.
PRESTON DOCKS
The docks were opened in 1892 and at the time boasted the largest dock basin in Europe. They served a town rapidly developing on the back of textile manufacture and quickly became some of the busiest in the country. Warehouses, oil tanks and loading cranes once formed a backdrop to the ocean-going cargo vessels that came and went on the high tides. Preston remained a working port into the early 1980s, but despite the advantage of its proximity to both the rail and motorway networks, the dockyard’s reliance on river access rendered it inaccessible to larger vessels, and trade consolidated on the better-placed docks further south at Seaforth and Bootle. The basin has, however, found a new lease of life, and since the area’s redevelopment for housing, retail and leisure, is once more as busy as it ever was. Preston Docks were named after Prince Albert Edward, Victoria’s eldest son, who finally succeeded his mother to the throne at the age of 60, only nine years before his owndeath.
PENWORTHAM
The historic old town of Penwortham sits on top of a prominent hill rising above the Ribble’s southern bank. It developed around a motte and bailey castle that overlooked an ancient fording place there. The Romans appreciated the strategic importance of the site and were the first to establish a fort here, a commanding position that remained in use throughout the Saxon period, and after the Conquest the Normans, too, established a base. Penwortham was one of the few places in Lancashire to be mentioned in the Domesday Book at a time when the area was largely considered an unproductive wasteland.
In 1075 Benedictine monks from Evesham Abbey founded a priory, and it was probably they who first began draining the surrounding marshes to create new farmland. The priory has long since disappeared, and all that remains of the castle is the artificial earth mound.
The oldest building still standing in Penwortham is the 15th-century church dedicated to St Anne, whose squat square tower can be seen through the trees upon the hill. Tradition holds that there has been a church on the site since 644 AD, a not improbable claim given the sustained significance of Penwortham during those early times, when travel across the sea to Celtic Ireland would have been a less daunting prospect than an overland journey to York or Canterbury. As with many churches in the country, St Anne’s was heavily restored by the Victorians – a practice intended as a proclamation of the prosperity that the industrial age had brought. One of the entrepreneurs who helped create the wealth of the industrial age is buried in a railinged tomb in St Anne’s churchyard. Born outside Bolton in 1768, John Horrocks opened Preston’s first factory cotton mill and went on to establish a textile business that became one of the largest in the world.
Beyond Priory Park a track takes you beside allotments to meet the main road at Penwortham New Bridge, over which the Ribble Way crosses to the river’s northern bank.
PENWORTHAM OLD BRIDGE
In the middle of the 18th century a bridge was built at Penwortham to replace the ford and ferry which had until then been the only means of crossing the river this far downstream. The bridge collapsed after only four years but was succeeded in 1759 by a more substantial structure. That survived until 1912, when the present bridge was constructed to meet the demands of a new vehicle on the roads – the motor car.
DAY WALKERS
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