Lives of a Lancashire Mansion: Alston (New) Hall

Six years in the making, this superbly crafted book is a ‘must read’ for anyone interested in Victorian country mansions with regard to social life, architecture, layout of rooms and grounds, décor and furniture, twentieth-century developments in electric lighting and vacuum cleaning systems.

The author, with much thoroughness, presents a detailed historical account of one of Lancashire’s well-loved country mansions; an account enriched by a large and impressive selection of illustrations.

In 1954 he began a career in the aircraft industry to work in Preston, Samlesbury and finally Warton, leaving in 1963 to enrol on a one-year technical teacher- training course in Bolton, following which, school-based, he taught physics, mathematics and technical drawing. In 1979 he graduated with a Master of Science degree after a one-year programme of research at the University of Manchester’s Institute of Science and Technology. On retirement, after a long teaching career, he introduced and tutored courses in Victorian and Edwardian architecture as well as industrial archaeology for the Department of Continuing Education at Lancaster University, eventually presenting similar courses at Alston Hall College.

In 1984 Lancashire County Council Library and Leisure Committee published his Lancashire under Steam – the era of the steam-driven cotton mill, and in 2002 Carnegie Publishing Ltd published his Cotton Mills of Preston – the Power Behind the Thread.