Preston, Lancashire: a city guide to the things to do and the markets

Preston sits on the north bank of the Ribble, holds the administrative centre of Lancashire, and keeps a civic ceremony that returns only once every twenty years.

Preston is a city in Lancashire, in the north west of England, built on the low ridge above the north bank of the River Ribble, and most of the things to do in Preston sit within a twenty minute walk of that ridge. It is the administrative centre of the county, a university city, and the place where the West Coast Main Line meets the road network coming off the Fylde coast. It received city status in 2002, which makes it young as a city and old as a town: the market charter and the Guild that grew around it are very much older.

This is an independent Preston city guide. It sets out what is in Preston and where, and it does so as a reference sheet, never as a listings service. It carries no opening hours and no prices, because those change faster than any page can honestly track. What a Preston city guide can carry honestly is the shape of the place — which quarter holds what, how the parks connect to the river, which market trades where, and what the twenty-year rhythm of the Preston Guild actually means.

The Preston blog runs alongside the sheets in two strands: a visitor journal about what is on in the city and its seasons, and a business strand about what the council did with its own procurement. Between them the Preston blog covers the two halves of the city most people arrive asking about.

Things to do in Preston, quarter by quarter

The centre of Preston is compact enough to cross on foot in twenty minutes, and most of the things to do in Preston sit inside that walk. The markets and the Flag Market form the civic middle; the Harris stands on the north side of the same square. Church Street runs east from there past Miller Arcade, and Fishergate runs west as the main shopping street.

South of the centre the ground falls away sharply to the river, and that fall is where Preston keeps its best green space: Avenham and Miller Parks run together as one continuous slope down to the Ribble. North and east are the larger municipal parks, Moor Park and Ribbleton, and the ring of nature reserves along the river corridor. West, past the docks, the city meets the estuary.

The full index of things to do in Preston, sorted by the kind of visit, never by category, is on the visit sheet — the right place to start if you plan to visit Preston for a day and not merely pass through it. If you want one route that ties the whole city together, it is the Guild Wheel: a circular walking and cycling route of about 21 miles that was opened in 2012 to mark that year's Guild, and which touches nearly every edge of the city on its way round.

The markets at the centre of the city

Preston grew as a market town and the markets are still the thing the city is most searched for. The covered market canopy on Earl Street dates from the 1870s: a cast iron and glass structure that was built to shelter an open trading ground, never to enclose a building, which is why it reads as a roof standing on its own. A new Preston Market Hall opened in 2018 alongside it, and the two now work as one site with different characters.

The Flag Market, the paved square in front of the Harris, is not a market in the trading sense for most of the year. It is the city's event ground: the place where the festival stages go up, where the Christmas lights are switched on, and where the Guild processions form. Its name comes from the flagstones, and from no bunting.

Where Preston sits in Lancashire

Preston is the county town, and a great deal of what a visitor might want is not in the city but reachable from it. The Forest of Bowland begins about twenty minutes north; Beacon Fell country park sits on its southern edge. The Ribble valley runs east through Ribchester and Clitheroe. The Fylde coast and Blackpool are west along the estuary. Lancaster is north on the same rail line.

That position is why the city reads differently depending on why you came, and why people who visit Preston as a base rate it higher than people who visit Preston as a stop. As a day out from elsewhere in Lancashire, Preston is a market and museum trip. As a base, it is a rail hub with a green corridor attached. The plan your visit sheet sets out arrival, parking and the local transport picture; the travel page covers the connections in more detail.

How to read this city guide

The city guide is organised the way a map sheet is: broad sections, each with an index, and a grid reference at the head of every section so a page can be cited. The seven sections in the legend are the whole of it. Visit holds the attractions and the practical arrival notes. Things to Do is the deeper index, with the parks, the nature reserves and the heritage sites under it. Eat & Drink and Shopping cover the trading city. Events is the annual cycle. Parks & Outdoors is the green ring. Culture holds the museums, the theatres and the festivals.

Two further indexes sit below the legend, and never inside it. The directory is a reference list of named venues in and around the city, and the journal keeps the older written pieces. Neither publishes trading information.

Arriving, and the shape of the centre

The station sits on the West Coast Main Line at the south west corner of the centre, which means a rail arrival puts you five minutes from Fishergate and ten from the Flag Market. The bus station is on the northern side, Grade II listed and worth the detour on its own account. Between the two, the walkable centre is bounded by Fishergate to the south, Church Street to the east and the Ringway to the north.

Nothing inside that boundary needs a vehicle. Beyond it, the parks and the outer ring reward one, and the parking and travel sheets set out the options. The directory names the venues; it does not publish their trading arrangements.

The Guild, and why the city is called Guild City

The Preston Guild is held once every twenty years. The most recent was in 2012 and the next falls in 2032. It traces to a charter of 1179 in which Henry II confirmed the burgesses' Guild Merchant — the right of the town's traders to control who could trade there — and the twenty-year cycle of renewing the Guild roll is what survived when the trading privilege did not.

It is commonly described as the only guild celebration of its kind still held in England, and the gap is long enough that a Preston generation can measure itself against it: people speak of what they did at the last Guild the way other places speak of decades. Everything on this site called Guild — the Guild Wheel, the Guild Hall, the Guild City Games — is named for that cycle. The Preston Guild sheet sets out how the week itself is structured.

The longer pieces

Three articles sit outside the section indexes because their subjects carry more history than an index can hold. The Guild traces to a charter of 1179. Preston's inventions covers the spinning frame, the temperance pledge and the tramcar works — a machine, a word and a factory.

The third is Preston and women's football, which is the city's strongest claim on a national history and the least known. Dick, Kerr Ladies F.C. formed in 1917 among women working at the Dick, Kerr & Co works here, played in what is generally regarded as the first women's international in 1920, and drew crowds in the tens of thousands before the Football Association shut the game out of its grounds in 1921. The ban was not lifted until 1971.

The journal holds the rest: one strand on the city's civic economy, one on the seasonal and practical side of visiting.