Myerscough College: the land-based college north of the city

Not a Preston city college but a Lancashire land-based one, and one of the larger of its kind in the country.

Myerscough College sits north of Preston, out along the A6 corridor towards Garstang, and it is a land-based college; general further education is not what it does. Its remit covers agriculture, horticulture, equine studies, animal management, arboriculture, motorsport and sport, which is a very different portfolio from anything in the city centre.

It is one of the larger land-based colleges in the country, and its position is the explanation: a college teaching agriculture and equine studies needs land, stabling and working facilities, none of which can sit in a city. The rural setting is the curriculum itself.

Why a land-based college is here

Central Lancashire is agricultural country the moment you leave Preston. North and east of the city the landscape is farmland running up to the Forest of Bowland, and the Fylde to the west is some of the most productive growing land in the north of England. A land-based college serving that catchment belongs exactly where this one is.

It also draws well beyond Lancashire, particularly on the equine and sports side, which is why the institution is larger than a purely local catchment would support.

Sport, and the other half of the reputation

Alongside the land-based provision, Myerscough carries a substantial sports and football academy remit, and that side of it is what most people outside agriculture have heard of. The combination of a large rural campus with sports facilities is unusual and it is a genuine part of the institution's identity.

For a city reference sheet the relevant point is that Preston's education picture is not confined to the city: a substantial part of it is out in the district, and Myerscough is the clearest example.

Getting there

The college is on the A6 north of Preston, in the Bilsborrow direction, and it is a drive from the city, and much too far to walk. That corridor is the same one that carries the entertainment complex and the hotel at Barton, and it continues towards Garstang and Beacon Fell.

The travel sheet covers the corridor. Public transport along the A6 exists but is not frequent enough to treat as a commute without checking.

Curriculum tied to the industries behind it

A land-based curriculum changes with the industries behind it, so any list of what is taught here goes out of date faster than most, and the college publishes its own properly. The stable facts are the ones on this sheet: the setting, the estate the teaching depends on, and the distance from Preston that makes it a drive.

What it records is what kind of institution it is, why it is where it is, and what it is known for.

The Fylde and the Bowland edge

The landscape either side of the college explains it better than any prospectus. West is the Fylde, flat and intensively farmed, some of the most productive growing land in the north of England. East and north the ground rises towards the Forest of Bowland, which is sheep and cattle country, too high and too wet for arable. A land-based college between the two teaches both, and its catchment is the whole of that range.

For a visitor with no interest in agricultural education, the useful consequence is geographic: the A6 north out of Preston is the road that takes you from a city to farmland in about ten minutes, and the college is one of the markers along it.

Land-based education in Lancashire

Land-based colleges are a distinct part of the English education system and they are not well understood outside it. They combine further and higher education, they operate working farms and facilities as teaching resources, and they draw their specialist students nationally, from well beyond Lancashire. Myerscough is one of the larger examples and it draws accordingly.

That national reach is why the institution's name is more widely recognised than the village it sits in. It is also why treating it as a Preston college understates what it is.