Note 18 — THE LOST FARM;
Reading edition
About the close of day, the towers of "proud Preston" were seen rising above the broad sweep of the river below Penwortham Bridge. The situation chosen by our ancestors for the erection of "Priest's Town"—so called because the majority of its inhabitants in former times were ecclesiastics—evinces the discriminating eye of a priest, and shows that, whether the religious orders selected a site for an abbey or for a city, they were equally felicitous in their choice. Placed at a convenient distance from the sea, upon the elevated banks of one of the finest rivers in England, with a mild climate and a dry soil, and commanding a rich assemblage of picturesque views, in one of the most interesting portions of Ribblesdale, the spirit of St Wilfred himself, to whom the parish church is dedicated, and who was the most accomplished ecclesiastic of his age, must have animated the mind that fixed upon this spot.[18]