Ashton Park - History

History

Ashton Park has a colourful history started by the Pedders family, who had made their fortune by founding the Old Preston Bank (located on Church St), built the Ashton Estate and Mansion in 1810 and lived there until 1861. Nearby Pedders Street and Pedders Lane are testimony to the importance of the family.

When Edward Pedder died in 1861, it became apparent that there were not sufficient funds to pay all the demands on the bank and so the estate and its contents had to be sold.

The park was then purchase by Edmund Robert Harris, who became Preston's greatest public benefactor and left the mansion to the governors of Queen Anne's Bounty for the benefit of poor clergy, which evolved into the Church Commissioners.

After the death of Harris in 1877 the estate was sold again. After many changes of ownership, the Calverts, mill owners, sold the mansion to English Electric at the end of World War I, who used it as a social club and for sporting activities. The best known from this period was Dick, Kerr's Ladies football team.

In 1937, Preston Town Council finally bought Ashton Park for the sum of £27.00 and the mansion, Ashton House was sold to Lancashire County Council who turned it into a care home for the elderly. In the 1990s the house was sold to its present owners of the pre-school.

Read more about this topic:  Ashton Park

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    The history of our era is the nauseating and repulsive history of the crucifixion of the procreative body for the glorification of the spirit.
    —D.H. (David Herbert)

    The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.
    William James (1842–1910)

    Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality, but what is to be done about it?
    Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)