Christmas shopping in Preston: which part of the city to use, and when

Four kinds of shopping, and December is the month when choosing the wrong one costs you two hours.

Preston's shopping divides four ways all year, and in December the difference between them becomes the whole question. The markets, the Fishergate high street with its two centres, the independent streets behind it, and the out-of-centre retail parks each behave differently under December load.

The short answer: the markets and the independent streets for anything you want to be unusual, the high street centres for the multiples, and the retail parks for anything bulky. Trying to do all four in one trip is the mistake.

The markets in December

The market site carries the Christmas fair and the seasonal trade, and the covered canopy is its December advantage: an outdoor market with a roof is a materially different experience from one without in Lancashire in December.

Continental and craft markets also pitch on the Flag Market through the season. Between them these are the part of Preston's Christmas shopping that is actually distinctive instead of replicable in any town.

Fishergate and the centres

The multiples are on Fishergate and in the two shopping centres opening off it. The remodelled street handles pedestrian volume considerably better than it used to, which is most noticeable in December.

This is also the part of the city a rail arrival meets first, so if you are coming by train it is unavoidable. The station is at the western end of the street.

The independent streets

Winckley Street and the blocks between the high street and the markets carry the small trade, and December is when those units are at their most useful: small shops sell the things that are hard to buy in a multiple.

Miller Arcade belongs in this group. Its units are the smallest commercial spaces in the centre and the trade in them is independent by necessity.

The retail parks

Deepdale Shopping Park and Capitol Centre absorb most of the December volume, and that is genuinely good news for the centre: the pressure that would otherwise fall on Fishergate goes to the edge.

Neither is walkable from the centre. If your December shopping is bulky, do it there and do the centre separately.

Parking, and the one thing worth planning

City centre parking on a December Saturday is the worst it gets all year and the multi-storeys fill early in the day. The parking sheet sets out the options; arriving before mid-morning or by train is the practical answer.

What it can tell you is which part of the city to aim at.

What Preston is actually good for

Worth saying plainly: Preston is not a Christmas shopping destination in the way that Manchester, Liverpool or Chester are, and treating it as one leads to disappointment. It has no cathedral quarter, no Victorian shopping street of national note and no large Christmas market of the German kind.

What it does have is a working market with a Victorian roof, an intact tiled arcade, and a compact centre you can cross in twenty minutes. Those are real advantages for a shopping trip and they are unrelated to scale.

Judged as a place to do actual Christmas shopping rather than to have a Christmas shopping experience, it compares well precisely because it is small. Nothing is far from anything else and the parking, once you are in, is central.

Arriving by train in December

Preston station sits on the West Coast Main Line at the western end of Fishergate, which makes a rail arrival genuinely practical for December shopping in a way it is not in most northern cities. You come out of the station and you are on the shopping street.

That also means the whole centre is reachable without a car: station, Fishergate, the centres, the Flag Market, the markets and the arcade in one line about twenty minutes long. Given what December parking is like, this is the recommendation.

The one thing that changes every year

Trading hours. the market site and the high street.

Nothing on this site prints them, and nothing on this site should. The centres and the market operator publish their own, and they are the only sources that will be right.