The city of Chester grew up around one of the largest Roman fortresses in the country. Its cathedral and Norman castle are evidence of Chester’s importance in the Middle Ages. During the Industrial Revolution the arrival of canals and railways brought increasing prosperity to Chester, resulting in a further boom in building, and in the twentieth century the town expanded beyond the city walls. Today the city attracts many visitors to its numerous ancient buildings, not least the Rows, two-...

The Lancashire market town of Preston boomed during the Industrial Revolution to become a major textile manufacturing centre. The population soared as families came to work in the cotton mills and the town spread rapidly. New housing, churches and civic buildings were constructed, and industries such as engineering clustered in the town. The downturn in textile manufacturing in the twentieth century hit Preston hard and, in common with many towns and cities during the country’s regeneratio...

The splendour of Victorian and Edwardian life in St Annes is today nothing more than a fast-fading memory. Imagine what fun it must have been to witness the growth of the genteel seaside resort in the late eighteenth century. Lytham was the grand old lady of the Fylde coast, steeped in history and tradition, and St Annes was the brash newcomer; a town hacked out of the sandhills by rich and powerful industrialists as recently as the mid-1870s. When the ancient and modern communities combin...

Fleetwood and Thornton Cleveleys are well known for their proximity to the coast. Developed during the Victorian era, Fleetwood retains a lot of this style, with remnants of its once vibrant life as a deep-sea fishing port. As a popular resort, today it acts as a quiet contrast to busier nearby towns, and is home to the Mount, a 7-acre park offering views across Morcambe Bay. Thornton Cleveleys, like Fleetwood, is also a prominent seaside town. The wonderful promenade, the Jubilee Gardens ...

This fascinating collection of old and new photographs of Lytham, Fairhaven and Ansdell provides a wonderfully nostalgic look at these towns on Lancashire's Fylde coast. In their heyday these towns, famous for their gardens, mansions, spacious streets and luxurious hotels, attracted some of the wealthiest people in the country. Businessmen commuted daily into Manchester, retired industrialists played golf and the rich sent their children to be educated here. This was also a coast of many c...

Lytham St Annes has always been a bit posh, the yin to its neighbour Blackpool’s yang, and home to no fewer than four golf courses, including the illustrious Royal Lytham St Annes. The town actually comprises the two separate towns of Lytham and St Annes, which are joined together at Fairhaven Lake. Lytham is the older of the two, while St Annes-on-Sea (as it used to be known) was a planned town laid out by a Victorian mill owner for a better class of holidaymaker, its grid pattern of wide...

Felixstowe owes its existence to the 19th-century fashion for seaside holidays when the gentry and businessmen chose to build their summer residences in the parishes of Walton and Felixstowe. In earlier centuries Walton had been the more significant settlement, with a manor and a castle. Even the later fort guarding the Suffolk side of Harwich harbour was often considered to be part of Essex. When the Dutch landed on the Common in 1667 and were defeated by Land guard Fort's garrison, all E...

Sunderland Through Time is a unique insight into the illustrious history of this part of the country. Reproduced in full colour, this is an exciting examination of Sunderland, the famous streets and the famous faces, and what they meant to the people of this area throughout the 19th and into the 20th Century. Looking beyond the exquisite exterior of these well-kept photos, readers can see the historical context in which they are set. Through the author's factual captions for every picture,...

As residents and regular visitors to Blackpool will know, and as the recent extensive changes to the town centre and promenade show, Blackpool never stands still. The on-going nature of Blackpool's development was all too apparent during the preparation of this book and the town's motto of 'Progress' is particularly apt. This book of historic and up-to-date views of Blackpool looks at some of the remarkable changes that have taken place in the town in both its better-known areas and in som...

This walk is one of twelve walks in John Wilks' Walks Through History - Birmingham series which contains twelve walks within the city. The whole book is available as an ebook or physical book or you could try this one out first. The book is a celebration of the beauty and poetry of the county. Each walk in this book has been chosen not only because it is a pleasant walk in its own right, but also because it goes past sites which reveal the rich and varied history of the county. Each walk i...

Welcome to London London, one of the great cities of the world, combines the best of the old and the best of the new; Castles are still in use, they still change the Guard at Buckingham Palace, and you can still find people feeding pigeons in the afternoons at Trafalgar Square. Yet, you can always find a new, dynamic London just around the corner. Today, London is the center for active, entrepreneurial Europe. The bars are flooded with people, the restaurant culture is g...

Battersea has grown to be a fashionable and vibrant district of south-west London. Referred to as Patricesy in the Domesday Book, Battersea was historically best known for market gardening, providing fruit, vegetables and flowers for the City of London. However, the area moved from rural to urban with the coming of the railways, industry and large-scale housing from the 1840s, provoking a population growth from 4,000 to 120,000 by the beginning of the twentieth century. Glimpses of the pas...