The audience enjoys the presentation delivered by guest speaker Stephen Sartin (Courtesy of Heather Crook)

On Monday evening of 7th October, there was an audience of nigh on two hundred people in attendance of the first meeting of the season of the Preston Historical Society meeting at St. John’s Minster on Church Street, Preston. Everyone was welcomed at the start of the evening’s proceedings by the vicar of Preston, Cannon Timothy Lipscombe who remarked on the wonderful turnout of members and visitors, going on to say that he wished the society great success and continuance in growing from strength to strength during their time at St. John’s Minster.

The guest speaker was the celebrated Stephen Sartin, renowned Preston historian who gave a most fascinating and lively presentation in his own excellent and inimitable fashion. The talk, entitled ‘Fishergate, Step by Step’, comprised of taking an imaginary journey down the south side of Fishergate, starting at Main Sprit Weind and continuing along to where the railway station is now. The audience was then taken backwards along the north side to the location of where the old Gilbert Scott Town Hall used to stand.

The sequenced slides were a balanced mix of very old and more modern scenes of the various buildings that have been swept away over time, affording Stephen to deliver a wonderful narrative, creating a very enhanced perspective of what could be seen and heard during the earlier times in Fishergate. It would be very fair to say that the members and visitors alike experienced great enlightenment of so many facts about the architecture of Fishergate and learned of where some of the former prominent characters of Preston resided in this popular part of the old town.

The guest speaker, Stephen Sartin stood to the left of society president, David Hindle (Courtesy of Karen Doyle)

Following their successful application of the ‘Awards For All’ grant from the Big Lottery Fund, the Preston Historical Society have been busy giving history talks and presentations in their ‘Reaching Out To The Community’ project to nursing homes, sheltered accommodation centres and other such like establishments since July 2013. The main purpose being to enable those who cannot attend the regular meetings, for reasons such as infirmity and illness, to be able to benefit from interesting talks and presentations, affording the chance for those people to verbally interact with others in stimulating conversation. If you would care to know more about this project then please contact the society secretary, Karen Doyle on her email address kd@pdprojects.co.uk to receive further information.

The Preston Historical Society meetings are held at St. John’s Minster, Church Street, Preston on the first Monday of every month from October until May the following year. If you would like to know more about the society then you can visit their website here or you can also visit their Facebook page, where lots of information can be found and interactive conversation takes place. They also have a Twitter presence where there is up-to-date information of meetings and late breaking news of the society.
Images of society outings, visits and bygone scenes of Preston and surrounding areas can also be viewed at their Flickr website.

Did you attend this meeting? If you did or would like to then let us know in the comments section below