Haslam Park, Preston: the Edwardian park beside the Lancaster Canal

The quietest of Preston's municipal parks, and the only one with a canal along its edge.

Haslam Park sits in the north west of Preston, and it is the city's Edwardian park — laid out after the great Victorian round of park building, on ground given for the purpose. It is the least visited of Preston's main parks by anyone from outside the city, and it is quiet in a way that the river parks and Moor Park are not.

Two things make it distinct. The Lancaster Canal runs along its northern boundary, which gives the park a hard linear edge and a towpath walk that continues well beyond it. And an area of the park is managed as the Haslam Park nature reserve, so the site carries formal parkland and habitat side by side.

The park itself

The layout is Edwardian municipal: broad paths, mature specimen planting, a lake, a bowling provision and open grass. It is smaller and more enclosed than Moor Park, and the planting is denser, which is what gives it the sheltered feel. The lake is the centre of it, and the paths run around, not across.

There is a sensory garden, and a playground, and the ground is mostly level, which makes Haslam Park the most straightforward of Preston's parks for anyone who would rather not deal with the slopes at Avenham and Miller.

The Lancaster Canal along the northern edge

The canal is the reason to come this side of the city. The towpath along the park boundary is level, surfaced and continuous, and it runs north out of Preston through Cottam and beyond — a straight, quiet walking and cycling route with none of the level change of the river paths.

The canal towpath links into the Guild Wheel on the western arc, which makes Haslam Park a natural break point on a circuit of the city. It is also the connection towards the wider outdoor network on the northern side.

The nature reserve

The reserve area within Haslam Park is managed for habitat instead of amenity, which in practice means less mowing, more standing deadwood and a rougher path surface. It is small, and it is best treated as part of a walk through the park, not as a destination on its own.

The other reserves on the river corridor are indexed on the nature reserves sheet. Haslam is the only one attached to a formal park, which makes it the easiest introduction to what the others are like.

Getting there

Haslam Park is roughly two miles north west of the city centre, reachable on foot along the canal or by the local bus network. Parking in the city centre and walking out along the towpath is the pleasanter option if you have the time for it.

How Haslam Park differs from the Victorian parks

Preston's other parks are Victorian, and the difference an Edwardian date makes is visible. The Victorian parks were built to display: terraces to be seen from, axes to be walked along, statuary at the focal points. Haslam Park was laid out when municipal thinking had shifted towards use, so the provision is for bowls, for children, for sitting, and the planting is there to shelter, not to frame a view.

That is why it feels domestic where Miller Park feels ceremonial, and it is also why it has aged more gracefully: nothing in it depended on being maintained to a formal standard. The paths still go where they were meant to go and the lake is still the middle of it.

Walking north from the park

The canal towpath is the reason to keep going instead of turn back. North of the park it runs dead straight through the western edge of the city and out into open country, past Cottam and towards Salwick, with no road crossings to speak of and a consistent surface. For anyone who wants distance without navigation, it is the best walking or cycling line out of Preston.

Southwards the same towpath runs towards the basin at the city end of the canal, and connects across to the western arc of the Guild Wheel. Combining the two — out along the canal, back on the Wheel — makes a circuit of a few hours that stays almost entirely off road.