Campaign founder, Daniel Crowther, explains why Preston Basin should be restored
The Restoring Preston Basin campaign wants to restore the 300 ft long by 60 ft wide Preston Basin of the Lancaster Canal and repurposing the 19th century basin site as a 21st century multi-purpose amenity, recreational and biodiverse space in central Preston, Lancashire. Why do we want to do this and why would it be good for Preston and those who call this city home?
The campaign is a response to the Preston Station Quarter Regeneration Framework which was launched in March 2022 by Preston City Council, Lancashire County Council and the University of Central Lancashire. This framework outlined several objectives: improving the public realm, creating new open spaces, reusing heritage assets and developing a network of green infrastructure. What better opportunity than the Preston Basin, once a major transhipment basin of the Lancaster Canal at its terminus in Preston. It currently lies beneath the car park of a retail park earmarked for redevelopment within the framework’s ‘University Walk’ quadrant. The framework makes no mention of the former Lancaster Canal or Preston Basin.
Preston Basin in 1897
The site of Preston Basin in 2022
We were delighted to partner with Create Streets in April 2024 to create an alternative development scenario for the site of Preston Basin in Preston. Create Streets wasted no time and hit the ground running. We were keen to create a shared vision based on adaptive reuse, repurposing a forgotten and overlooked site with ‘a future rooted in the past.’ At its height, thousands of tonnes of coal was delivered and transhipped each week at Preston Basin to be consumed in factories, foundries, mills and homes. In its place, a multi-functional, green and biodiverse carbon store could reclaim this space.
The size of Preston Basin (300 ft by 60 ft) roughly equates to 70 car parking spaces. It would be sufficiently large, along with a short, 161 ft long section of recovered Lancaster Canal, to act as a ‘ready-made’ footprint for the Preston Station Quarter Regeneration Framework’s desire for a network of green infrastructure, adaptive reuse, heritage-sensitive and biodiversity friendly spaces. The official framework indicatively outlines two open and green spaces for this site. With some reconfiguration of the site, these spaces could be repositioned to the site of Preston Basin without compromising wider development aspirations.
The campaign is buoyed by the slow but steady change in the way in which we perceive our existing buildings and built environment. The ongoing battle to demolish and rebuild – or retain and retrofit – Marks and Spencer’s flagship store at Orchard House, Oxford Street in London has already become the cause célèbre for the retrofit, reuse and repurpose movement, much as the loss of London Euston station, including its propylaeum and Great Hall between 1962-3 or Pennsylvania station, New York in 1963 proved seminal moments for the preservation moment. Regardless of the eventual outcome, ‘M&S Oxford Street’ has shone an important light on the need to reuse and retrofit wherever possible. The built environment and construction industry, responsible for 40% of annual global CO2 emissions, should drastically decarbonise and reduce embodied carbon.
But why stop at buildings? Spaces can be repurposed and reused as well. Over the last few decades hundreds of miles of former railway lines including their bridges, viaducts and tunnels have been given new leases of life as cycle and footpaths offering healthy, low-carbon and low-cost travel options. When Preston Basin fell out of use in the 1930s, photographs show the site simply filled in with waste and covered over. Many of the stones doubtless remain in situ a few feet beneath the ground. Being buried ‘out of sight and out of mind’ makes the basin no less worthy for reuse and repurposing.
Repurposing, reuse and reclamation are not new concepts. We can learn from the construction of Preston Basin and the Lancaster Canal itself. When the canal’s ‘navvies’ were building the canal and basin in the early 1800s, they cut through the remains of Preston disused friary which had been established in 1260 and last used as a House of Correction until 1789. The navvies removed a number of stones and simply incorporated them into the walls of the basin where many will remain.
The campaign drew on several inspirational precedents where blue – green space acted as a catalyst and complement for wider developments. They include:
- plans for a linear park on the footprint of the former Manchester, Bolton & Bury Canal in Salford;
- Camley Street Natural Park on the site of formal coal drops in King’s Cross, London;
- a former courtyard canal basin at Murrays’ Mills in Ancoats, Manchester;
- a sunken garden landscaped in a ‘dry-dock’ at the Thames Barrier Park in Silvertown, London; and
- Mayfield Park, Manchester’s newest park in 100 years that repurposes stones and bridge beams from the site’s industrial past.
The Lancaster Canal, Preston Basin and the adjoining tramroad played a critical role in the development and growth of Preston 200 years ago. Preston Basin lay at the very nexus of this growth, with much of the town’s development concentrated by the basin and along the corridor of the canal, cementing the arrival of the Industrial Revolution. The release of Preston Station Quarter Regeneration Framework provides a once in a generation opportunity to restore and incorporate the site of Preston Basin, and the Restoring Preston Basin campaign hopes to provide a starting point for how this could be achieved.
The campaign hopes to present the designs to the relevant authorities, stakeholders and community groups in due course. In the meantime, the campaign welcomes suggestions and comments, and collaboration with individuals, groups and organisations wishing to create better places from repurposed spaces. To learn more about the campaign, please visit: www.prestonbasin.org or get in contact with Daniel via restoreprestonbasin@gmail.com.
Daniel Crowther, the campaign founder, is a graduate of the Bartlett School of Planning and has worked in urban planning in the UK and South East Asia. Recent work includes participatory and community-led design projects, alternative master-plans for landless communities and areas prone to natural disaster, advocating climate-resilient housing and nature-based solutions.