The Knowhere Guide

Best and Worst in Preston, Lancashire*

Preston, Lancashire Triumphs and Tragedies

Favourite Building

• Samlesbury Hall, not held togther by grants or National Trusts, but working hard everyday as a business. A great place to visit, especially on a Sunday whenthey get a royal visit every week.
• Deepdale Football Ground
• The Harris Building and the Old Town Hall (demolished now!)
• waterstones (and they were going to knock it down to build a new bus station)
• the harris looks good to me
• Harris Museum
• harris
• The bus station - I believe this is the biggest one in Europe - WHY is it being demolished!?!
• The town hall
• Harris library, absolutly gorgeous
• Guild Tower
• preston market, the cream of the weirdos congregate here daily!
• FOX STREET AND THE CLIFTON HOTEL - TED(FAT WALLET) ANY ROOMS?
• DEMOLISH THE ODEON CINEMA?!!! YOU MUST BE JOKING! IT JUST NEEDS SOMEONE WITH A GOOD IMAGINATION TO GET IT BACK TO IT'S FORMER SPLENDOUR.OBLITERATE TOKYO JOES BY ALL MEANS .I'D RATHER SEE THE LONG QUEUES FOR A FILM INSTEAD OF A "WAM BAM THANKYOU MAM!" WELL, MAYBE WITHOUT THE "THANKYOU".PEOPLE OF PRESTON (CITY?),WAKE UP & LOOK AT YOURSELVES,LEARN FROM YOUR EUROPEAN COUSINS,IRELAND INCLUDED,& REALIZE HOW GROTTY,DROSS,& BORING YOUR LIVES ARE!!
• The Harris Museum & Art Gallery - gotta be an it !
• Poppadom Palace kebab house on Friargate.
• ant good clothe shop
• The old courts!
• Bus Station
• Harris Library
• Miller Arcade, 1900 Italianate building. Would be better still if converted to restaurants and bars
• the bus station - so ugly its attractive
• The bus station!
• Harris Library - beautiful old building.
• The Harris Museum & Library
• Harris Library
• Why, the Sir Tom Finney stand at Deepdale of course.
• The County Coucil Building on Fishergate Hill
• Orion bingo
• Lancashire county hall is fairly nice if you're into large old buildings - though the people inside....

Demolish It Now Building

• Bus station, soon will be!
• Crystal House
• Just in response to the comments about Crystal House being a monstrosity (I agree!) it is currently having panels attached to the exterior so it 'blends in' with the look and feel of the Harris Building and other buildings in the area. A new location has been decided for the new bus station so the old one will finally be laid to rest however, there is a lot of dispute that the new location is too far from the train station so no doubt will take at least a few years til anything gets underway.
• the bus station. And it is actually going to be knockd down so plus one for us. the building above oddbins really needs to go it's the lowest point of 70's town planning
• all council estates and all of the tracksuit townies who live there, your not big or clever
• Crystal House if you see it yoiu'll know why nuff said!!
• The job Centre
• bus staion its dreadful
• The revamped St Georges centre - do they want to make it any more generic? Oh, and Tokyo Jo's of course!
• the high rise flats near the centre!!!
• MOOR LANE FLATS>> GONE ,, THANK GOD!
• some of the horrid plasticy seventies stuff
• The bus station. It's ugly and stinks. People jump off it.
• Brookfield Pub
• squires or tokes, or maybe both.
• The Fylde Superbike Building on the Ringway
• ALMA, THE CLIFTON AND THE ESSEX , THE CROWN AND MAGISTRATES COURTS THE POLICE STATION WITH THEM ALL IN IT
• BUS STATION,HIGH RISE FLATS THAT RAISE DELINQUENCY
• No contest - Crystal House.
• Bus station - a modern day freak show. I always feel like a threat to the gene puddle on the rare occasion I go there. ASDA at Fulwood. Full of scroaty people who can't control a trolley and don't understand the simple idea of the give way markings and signs in the car park.
• aqualenium
• Flats, flats and more flats, around avenham! Plus legends next door to pne, why is it there? dive!
• . All the McDonalds, Burger Kings & KFC's (Source of 50% of Britains Street litter.)
• Bus Station . Unsanitary piss sodden eyesore bizarrely favoured by local loonies. Raze this fucker to the ground and find somewher nice for our homeless/ criminally insane residents to live - but NOT St Johns Centre, they have enough already.
• Legends night club (spoils the view of Deepdale football ground)
• The bus station its bloody horrible
• All of the horrible high rise flats, especially the ones due to be knocked down on mill lane. Goodbye!
• bus station - it smells, constant risk of being mugged and it's ugly!
• they should knock it all down and start again
• All the nasty flats in preston where very dodgy kids appear to be from. They never seem to go to school.
• Crystal House - Monstrosity that they demoilished the old town hall to build.
• The old Odeon cinema next to Tokyo Jo's. This place has been sitting dormant for yearts, and something must be done with it.
• The bus terminal in Preston , apparently Europes largest and unglyest
• Crystal house. right in the middle of town. Overlooks the brilliant square. But it's a typical 60s/70s tower block, completely out of place.
• Victoria market because it`s ugly and it houses all kinds of rubbish
• The unsafe railway station (slightest wind and tiles fall off the roof)
• The bus station is awful.

The Best Things

• Skate spots.
• Town centre is easy to get around, and avenham.
• Potato sellers on the flag market Parched peas Meat and Potato pies Preston North End
• Born and raised in Preston, I love it. It may not be as 'glamourous' or trendy as Manchester or Liverpool but it's not as impersonal because I think Preston's history gives it character, something that bigger cities often lack. Good shopping, nightlife and places to eat out. It may still be pretty basic stuff but with plans such as the Titherbarn Regeneration Project (creating around a million square feet of office and retail space and up to 5,000 jobs) Preston has a bright future... if the council FINALLY makes its mind up over the location of the new bus station!
• a twenty minute drive and you can escape to leyland which have a great park, wordon park that is.
• avonaham park
• lots of different types of people
• The atmosphere - loads of shops, pubs and clubs great for students!
• shopping! of course everything is fairly easy to find and the train station is slap bang in the centre and its all surrounded by car parks so its all easy access and erm yeah all the bars and clubs are on church street to so thats the only place you really need to know!
• At the time of writing preston is just the right size to be exciting without being scary, you can make friends without seeing the same people all the time.
• Nightlife is good, good range of shops and nice places to hang around.
• Its preston at the end of the day, great people, great town, what more do you want
• Avenham Park The bus station The newspaper Lancashire Evening Post The Docklands St Walburges Church spire
• this sounds really pc but the diversity of people, except goths!
• THE SCOUSERS' SMACK AND THEIR ROCK ISN'T BAD TO
• AHHH! THE WAREHOUSE! THE ONLY MUSICAL CULTURAL CENTER IN PRESTON WHERE PEOPLE GO TO APPRECIATE THE REASON THEY'RE THERE FOR!GOOD MUSIC,PAST AND PRESENT,AND NOT GOING OUT LOOKING FOR TROUBLE.BLESSED BE THE WAREHOUSE AND THE 30 YEARS IT HAS BEEN GOING!!!!!!AND MANY MORE TO COME!
• Harris Museum & Art Gallery
• Cheap houses - a teacher's salary gets you quite a lot here. Good train services to everywhere else.
• the fit lads at my gym
• skateboarding & mosher shops
• The pubs are slowly going upmarket, the food, and the people are great plus its home!
• Once you find one good place, people start recommending others, and soon you get to know the best place to go for anything. Admittidly they are all miles away from each other, in the cheaper rent areas, but it all adds to the fun!
• girls ( especially the sexy schoolgirls from Lytham and surrounding areas) " I wish they all could be Queens Drive girls "
• National Football Museum is a must for any football fan. Deepdale floodlights,they're enormous.
• the people and the nightlife
• Students. The Ship Inn.
• Winckley Square - sit and enjoy your ice cream/chips/khat in relative peace and fresh air.
• Cuffs Ice Cream (A little shop near the Cemetary on Ribbleton Avenue)
• Surprisingly good nightlife for a smallish town and not too much fighting either.
• 200 MILES TO GLaSGOW AND 200 MILES TO LONDON
• It's a relatively quiet town, safe for a good night out on the whole. Avenham Park one of the oldest public Parks in the UK
• T'people and a proper market
• The best thing I find about Preston at the moment is the football club. With a new manager installed at the tail end of last season, the team are playing to thier potential once again. A great start to the season has installed confidence in the fans, and we now believe that at the very least we should make the play-offs this season. Top scorers in the league until Sunderlands 7-0 win over Oxford, it installs confidence when the manager says the attack is the weakest part of the team and the part he'd like to improve.
• Avenham Park ! A dream place. Also reputedly the first place where eggs were ever rolled down the hill at Easter.
• Lots of pubs, and "feel" when it's on
• Sitting on the Cenotaph eating an ice cream on a sunny summers afternoon. You can watch the world go by.
• Good rail and road links for leaving Preston. Not too much violence/murders compared with Blackpool which is a nightmare of a place. But you can't be certain of safety, be careful etc. History, plenty of it. The industrial revolution started here with the invention of the spinning jenny. Decisive battles during the civil war fought here.
• The best thing is its bus station which is the largest in Europe.
• The football club is building a new football stand this will include a museum of football which should prove interesting.
  [1997] The stand is finished and the museum, however the PNE bar is crap. Legends outside the stadium is quite good (or Leg-ends as some call it). North End was the first team to win the double and the first team to win it two years in a row (1889-1890 and 1890-1891)
• Best thing about Preston: RockFM, rated number one radio station is based in Preston, and so is the Lancashire Evening Post.
• Fresh qat available at Willy Banjoes Head shop near the market.
• Preston is not as cool as you would have us believe. The best thing about it is the number of trains & buses that pass through & consequently give you a way out. The other good point is the juke box in the Vic pub opposite the station.

The Worst Things

• Just a word about the awful Crystal House - it's currently undergoing a reclad and actually looks really good! So hopefully it will become one of the better buildings before too long.
• Townies
• Townie scum.
• Crystal House MoorNook Callum Estate Brookfield Estate
• The council... regeneration should be at least at the finalised stages of planning by now.
• brookfield, callon, moor nook, farringdon park, etc etc.
• The kids
• Too many townies
• its erm Preston
• After about 10.30, you've got no public transport whatsoever.
• tanterton north end of town.......a real no-go area, don't even think about it
• Crystal House All the miserable looking terraced housing The traffic lights The rubbish on the streets
• piss all over the train station
• DOMINIC'S GEAR
• NO MORE BODYSHOP!!!!!! WHY??????????????????????
• A Council Who's average age is well over 60 ! Forward thinking ?!
• Crap bin men - don't seem to understand the concept of putting the bin back on the pavement rather than blocking the road / your driveway. People on certain average new estates thinking they've made it. Hello - it's only a Redrow semi! I bought one as a starter home (big mistake - I'm surrounded by snobby people who have nowt to be snobby about) and they're nowt special (well, I suppose if you're from Avenham they are). If I end up like them living there into middle age I'll top myself! Let's compete to see who can have the biggest bunch of flowers in the window and the fanciest tie-backs on the curtains. Pillocks! I'm back to the Ribble Valley as soon as I can get a half-decent promotion at work. Town centre full of chavs / pikies - dodgy rough people who wear shell suit bottoms tucked into their socks, tan "rockies", cheap branded sportswear, lots of cheap gold (haven't spotted the vile gold Argos clowns yet but it's only a matter of time) and, if female and under sixteen years of age, a pushchair.
• all the little townies
• tramps crime etc. etc.
• People fighting for no reason, very sad!
• DO NOT if possible use the bus station toilets. for your own safety.
• the thing i hate most about preston is the generalisation that all people living on larches, savick, moor nook, brookfield, etc are all scum and cause trouble. many people seem to think that because these people live on council estates they are dole dossers or scallies. this is a major generalisation and it really really annoys me. these areas get enough bad things said about them near enough every day in the newspapers and it gets quite irritating. the people who say these kinds of things have probably never met any1 from these areas.
• New Look, Etam etc.
• Bus Staion Tramps shitting themselves in the Bus Sation The Yates/Wall St beer monsters that ruin every provincial Northern town and a few others ) Fuck all job prospects
• Litter. People must come from far and wide to dump it here! Too many empty office blocks. Why are they building more? Traffic Management. Is it the worst in Britain?
• We are far too close to Blackpool for comfort
• the weather - the greyness clashes with the buildings
• the worst thing about Preston is Deepdale shopping centre.Every weekend I go to shop then spend the best part of an hour sitting in my car with a thousand other car users all trying to get out of only one exit.Unfortunately there seems to be no other way to get out which seems to be quite a health and safety risk.
• "Scallies" - people who wear shell suit/track suit bottoms and nice white socks. They go about thinking they're great. YOU ARE NOT. They dislike students. Hmmmm. Locals that go about saying "Students!? We pay for you, get yourself a job" SHUT UP.
• Sitting and enjoying your ice cream/chips/khat whilst sat on the Cenotaph which is a tribute to sacrifice not a park bench or dustbin. A stream of human dross drifting across Fylde Road whilst apparently asleep or stoned and oblivious to traffic.
• Don't believe everything you read about Moor Nook, Brookfield, Larches etc. A lot of good people live on these estates. The criminal element is in the minority. We only hear of the bad things so consequently all residents get tarred with the same brush. It isn't fair to generalise when you don't have the full facts.
• It's a relatively quiet town. Town centre traffic
• Pedestrianising everything
• First up - Legends? 'Tis lies, an evil smelly place reminiscent of the bad American roadhouses you see in the movies... go ther if you like the idea of a snooker cue up your arse. Known for having one of the highest levels of animosity towards students - term time student bashings are a common occurence.
• Parts of town are still really scummy and depressing.
• Preston has the highest density of traffic lights known to man.
• Radioactive deposits from the Irish sea come in along the river Ribble. (Stinks even miles away from it.) Moor Nook, Larches, Brookfield, Farindon Park which are practically no-go areas if you're a decent non criminal type person.

The Knowhere Guide started out as a list of places to skateboard in the UK. It is a compilation of (unedited) information and views supplied by users like yourself. It is not a conventional tourist guide!

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Credits

Last updated: 2007-06-21