Preston is today a city of some 120,000 inhabitants. It is situated on the north bank of the Ribble in Lancashire. It is relatively unique among English towns and cities in being dominated by Catholic rather than Anglican ecclesiastical buildings. In 2012, Cardinal Vincent Nichols noted: “The history of the Christian and Catholic faith is long and deep here in Preston.”
Catholicism hung on tenaciously after the Reformation in Preston and Lancashire, with many estates in the hands of “Papists”. The Preston Mission was served by the Society of Jesus from 1701. A large Catholic chapel was opened in Friargate in 1761 (demolished 1990). James Boswell visited it in 1777 and found it “so filled with seats that I wondered at so much indulgence by the Civil Magistrates”.
