Unlikely Places - Preston & Wyre Railway - Residency Wyre BC

Pass a building site at the bottom of the aptly named Station Road in Poulton and the sharp eyed may notice amongst the piles of earth and concrete a patch of ancient cobbles, some railway sleepers and a couple of lengths rusty railway track.

These remnants of the Industrial Revolution are a clue to the existence of one of Wyre’s most “Unlikely Places” the remains of one of the first railways to be built in Britain, the railway that connected the new town of Fleetwood to Preston and the rapidly expanding railway network that was linking the factories and ports of Lancashire with London. It is also the site of Poulton’s first railway Station.

Preston & Wyre Railway was conceived in 1835 by local landowner and politician Peter Hesketh Fleetwood, and opened in 1840. It carried passengers and freight until 1970 when the passenger service ended, freight services continuing until 1999.

The railway was once part of the West Coast mainline linking Scotland to London. On one occasion paying host to Queen Victoria on a return trip from Scotland. The railway was a great success, in its first month the service carried over 20,000 passengers.

Peer over the bridge at Poulton Station and a section of rusting rail track mysteriously vanishes into a thicket of bushes and brambles, this is another part of the railway to Fleetwood, a part that is still almost intact all the way to Fleetwood.

The railway is currently being refurbished by Poulton & Wyre Railway Society with the long term objective of re-establishing a working railway.

Related to Residency with Wyre BC - People, Place & Conversation.

UPDATE:- Since this was written the site has been developed and built over with a sheltered retirement complex Crocus Court, see link.

Preston Wyre Railway - Fleetwood to Poulton - ICI to Burn Naze - 2015

A selection of images taken with the permission of the Poulton & Wyre Railway Society, of a section of the former Fleetwood to Poulton railway track, from the Fleetwood boundary of the former ICI site to the recently refurbished Burn Naze station.

Artist in Residence Project - Preston & Wyre Railway 1840 - 1999

In August 2015 retired scientist and local artist Alistair Parker was awarded a commission as Artist in Residence by Wyre BC in partnership with LeftCoast, as part of the “Creative People in Places” initiative on the project, “People Places & Conversation”, part of a collective of six artists.

For his residency, he chose to engage with the former historic Preston and Wyre Railway, a wonder of the Industrial Revolution and Victorian innovation. The railway was the vision of Sir Peter Hesketh-Fleetwood and opened in 1840; just five years after the opening of the first passenger railway between Liverpool and Manchester and only five years after work was started on the project. The railway has a fascinating history and was fundamental to the establishment of the port of Fleetwood, as the first town to owe its very existence to the building of a railway and the first seaside town on the Fylde coast. The railway was a great success, it was planned to carry 15,000 passengers in its first year, amazingly, the railway carried 20,000 passengers in the first month.

Unless you are tall enough to see over the parapet of the Breck Road bridge at Poulton Station you probably would not realise that the railway track that emerges from the station heading for Blackpool had a branch off to the right, just before the signal box [since demolished and the switch connection between the mainline and the Fleetwood branch has been removed], the rusting rails disappear into an overgrown tangle of brambles, bushes and rapidly growing trees. This is the disused railway line to Fleetwood, realigned here in 1896. The track rapidly became overgrown and virtually invisible, amazingly the track is still in place as far as the bridge at Jameson Road, a hidden reminder of a speculative adventure. Just four hundred yards further down Breck Road, at the junction with Station Road, at the time of writing, another mysterious piece of railway history was being excavated, the remains of the original 1840 railway line to Fleetwood together with the foundations of the original Poulton Station. [UPDATE:- Since this was written the site has been developed and built over with a sheltered retirement complex Crocus Court, see link.] The Poulton to Fleetwood line closed to passenger traffic in 1970 and finally to freight traffic in 1999.

Plans to reopen the line began in 2006 when Poulton and Wyre Railway Society was formed with the objective of reopening the Poulton to Fleetwood railway line. To date, they have refurbished Thornton Cleveleys Station and are currently engaged in the renovation of Burn Naze Station. The Society has cleared significant sections of the track and has a number of railway related items they are in the process of refurbishing, including a diesel shunter. Funds are currently being raised for the purchase and refurbishment of a Diesel Multiple Unit, similar to the last rolling stock that formerly ran on the line. A report commissioned by Wyre BC in 2009 estimated that a full refurbishment of the line would cost in the region of £40m, the option of a Heritage railway run by the Poulton & Wyre Railway Trust would cost £5.5m.

The artists’ task was to find a way of bringing the existence of the railway, its history and future to the attention of a wider audience. With the cooperation of PWRS a limited section of the track was explored together with the history of the railway and the plans for the future. Alistair also conducted a more detailed exploration of the history of the railway through local archives, the Internet and the resources of the British Newspaper Archive. The local libraries proved particularly helpful with this research.

Part of the brief was to engage with the local community. Alistair commission a local artist David McGuire to give his interpretation of the Preston and Wyre Railway. A retired aerospace design engineer, David had been a prolific illustrator and cartoonist in his earlier years but a career and family had cut short his artistic aspirations. It was my intention to offer David a challenge and encourage him to rediscover his artistic talents, I think the results will confirm that he has. Conversations have been had with local residents and people with an interest in the railway and its history. It is planned to engage with local schools in the coming months to complete the project.

Following early retirement as a business man and a career as a Laboratory Scientist, Alistair became a practicing artist, in addition to having a busy commercial art practice, he is engaged in contemporary art research through post-graduate Masters and Doctorate degrees at Lancaster University.

Dr Alistair J Parker, BA(Hons), MA, PhD

UPDATED 03.02.2020

Wyre Artist in Residence - People Places & Conversation

Wyre Borough Council in partnership with LeftCoast are offering the opportunity of 5 artists in residence commissions for Wyre based contemporary artists.

The residencies will be an opportunity for artists to work in non-familiar locations and use the opportunity to engage with communities, staff and/or the general public to inform the project that is produced.

The residencies will be based within specifically chosen, non-art spaces for the artist to engage with those different audiences.  The commissions are about people and place; finding the stories of the everyday and revealing something about the lives of Wyre.

The artist commissions can be from any art form from digital art, photography, film, to more traditional art forms of drawing, painting or 3D work. The selection panel will be most interested in how this opportunity can be interpreted through ideas and the approach to working with people and location.

Finally the commissioned artists in residence will be invited to bring their projects together into an exhibition or publication to be shown somewhere in Wyre. It will be the role of the exhibiting artists to co-ordinate and curate the exhibition, find a suitable location or touring opportunities. Marketing and organisational support will be provided by Wyre Council and LeftCoast.

It will be the responsibility of the 5 successful artists to co-ordinate when their projects have been completed and when they would like the exhibition to happen. The end of the whole project will need to be no later than the 31 March 2016. 

Photographs in Women in the City - Liverpool Photography Festival

Women in the City

As part of the Liverpool Photography Festival 15 - 31st May 2015 to celebrate the visit of three famous Queens: Mary II, Queen Elizabeth and Queen Victoria,  There was a call for photographers to submit their images celebrating Women in the City, to showcase in our online gallery. From female photographers, to images of the women we admire;shots of majestic liners and Grandmothers entertaining the young, let your imagination run wild, capture and share your moments in Liverpool.

I submitted two photographs from my maternal Grandfathers photograph archive. William Turner had a Tattooing and Photographic studio on Lime Street in the early 1900's. He was well connected with the circus and music hall folk...

The photographs are on an outdoor display in Thomas Steers Way in the Liverpool One shopping mall. The upper one is of my great grandmother preparing Sunday dinner in the backyard. The other is of Annie Jones the bearded woman. A famous member of the Barnum and Bailey Circus. 

Photographs by Johnny Parker

Chang Celebration Artwork Unveiling - Everton FC

Presentation and unveiling of  the Chang Beer Bottle Top art work at Everton Football Club. The artwork was fixed to the wall at the entrance to the Directors Car Park at Goodison Park.

The artwork is constructed from 1500 Chang beer bottle tops selected from over 5000 tops collected by Chang beer outlets over the previous year. The tops were embedded in resin and a laser cut brushed stainless steel outline of the famous Everton club logo applied to the surface along with the words 10 Years to commemorate the longest shirt sponsorship partnership in the Premiership. 

I am grateful to Dot-Art, Liverpool for the commission.

Simulation of Exhibition Installation - The Originary Moment

The video shows a simulation an exhibition installation in which 3 back-projected videos are overlaid by the imaged created by a whole room Camera Obscura.


The concept behind the installation is a simulation of the originary moment in the invention of photography when Henry Fox Talbot viewed the scene of Lake Como from the balcony of his hotel room on the screen of his portable Camera Obscura and dreamt of a way of fixing the image he saw by capturing the light or by painting with the light as he put it. His sole intention being to remember the spectacular view and to be able to share it with others on his return home. The originary moment is contrasted with the reality of his dream, the banal snapshot photograph. Which is represented here by the negative space of a quintessential snapshot pose, In this case the focus of my PhD research , a snapshot of my "first day at school" taken by my father.