MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT FOR PRESTON.
- 1832.—Peter Hesketh Fleetwood, and the Hon. Henry Thos. Stanley.
- 1835.—Peter Hesketh Fleetwood, and the Hon. Henry Thos. Stanley.
- 1837.—Peter Hesketh Fleetwood, and Robert Townley Parker.
- 1841.—Sir Peter Hesketh Fleetwood, Bart., and Sir Geo. Strickland, Bart.
The year 1840 was an auspicious one in the history of the Fylde. On the 25th of July, the Preston and Wyre Railway, running through the heart of this district, was completed and declared open for traffic. By its means the farmer became enabled to convey his produce to the extensive market of Preston; and Kirkham, Poulton, and Garstang were no longer the only towns accessible to our agriculturists for the sale of their crops. The early appreciation of the utility and benefit of the line is apparent from the rapid increase of its traffic, as shown by the annexed tables, in which the official returns of passengers and goods for the week ending Dec. 14th, 1842, and the corresponding weeks of the four succeeding years are stated:—
At the present date, 1876, the average weekly traffic on this railway and its branches to Lytham and Blackpool, amounts in round numbers to £1,200 for passengers, and £800 for goods.
The Preston and Wyre Railway was amongst the earliest formed, and the impression made on the natives of this district, who had been accustomed to the slow-going coaches, must have been one of no little amazement, when, for the first time, they beheld the “iron horse” steaming along the rails at a speed which their past experience of travelling would make them regard as impossible. The following lines were written by a gentleman named Henry Anderton, a resident in the Fylde, on the opening of the railway:
“Some fifty years since and a coach had no power,
To move faster forward than six miles an hour,
Till Sawney McAdam made highways as good,
As paving-stones crushed into little bits could.