Preston Heritage Hub – Preserving Preston's Heritage

Preston Heritage Hub – The idea

Preserving Preston’s Heritage CIC is initiating a dynamic project to establish a temporary Heritage Hub within Preston Covered Market, showcasing the city’s rich architectural and cultural history. This pop-up space will serve as a community focal point, featuring interactive displays on significant buildings, places at risk, and the Market Quarter, alongside photographs, maps, and resources from local heritage organisations. Visitors can engage with the exhibits, share personal memories, contribute photos, explore genealogy tools, and participate in heritage walks and events. Acting as a practical pilot, this initiative will gather insights into community aspirations for a permanent Heritage Centre and strengthen connections with Preston’s heritage organisations, paving the way for safeguarding the city’s historic treasures.

A Heritage Centre Pilot

What we’ll deliver

Create a Pop-Up Heritage Hub in Preston Covered Market
Create a programme of public heritage information and activities
Run the Heritage Hub as a public pilot

Why it’s a great idea

– Creates a vibrant community space where residents can actively contribute to the preservation of their city’s history.
– Promotes intergenerational engagement by encouraging families and diverse groups to explore Preston’s heritage together.
– Offers hands-on learning and skill-building opportunities through activities like genealogy exploration and heritage walks.
– Drives footfall to the Market Quarter, supporting local businesses and enhancing the area’s vitality.
– Encourages local pride by highlighting previously overlooked or undervalued aspects of the city’s cultural identity.
– Facilitates a deeper connection between residents and local history through interactive and immersive experiences.

Steps to get it done

Creating our displays – permanent wall banners
Creating our displays – information boards that will change on a cycle
Create object displays – local history artefacts

Visit the SpaceHive website:

https://www.spacehive.com/preston-heritage-hub-heritage-centre-pilot

About the Project Creator

Preserving Preston’s Heritage CIC (PPH) is a community-led organisation established to help protect, understand and celebrate Preston’s historic buildings, places and stories.

We began as a group of local people who were concerned about the loss and neglect of Preston’s heritage, but wanted to do something positive and constructive rather than simply complain about it. The group quickly attracted widespread local interest and became a Community Interest Company in June 2025, giving us a formal structure through which we can develop projects, build partnerships and access funding.

Our work is about much more than individual buildings. We want to help create a culture in which Preston’s heritage is understood, valued and used as part of the city’s future. We believe historic buildings and places can support regeneration, tourism, education, community identity and the local economy while remaining living parts of the city.

We have developed a growing programme of practical work. This includes documenting Preston’s historic buildings, maintaining our own Buildings at Risk watchlists, researching and sharing the history of significant places, promoting local heritage events and resources, and bringing heritage organisations and community groups together through the Preston Heritage Network.

Our Buildings at Risk work provides a public-facing way of highlighting buildings that are vulnerable through neglect or other threats. We also maintain information about lost buildings, listed buildings and other aspects of Preston’s historic environment, helping make information that can otherwise be scattered across different sources more accessible to the public.

In April 2025 we established the Preston Heritage Network, bringing together local heritage and community organisations to share information, ideas and opportunities for collaboration. Participants have included Friends of Edith Rigby, Preston Black History, Friends of Winckley Square, Preston History, Preston Historical Society, Ribble Steam and others. We intend these meetings to continue several times a year.

PPH has also demonstrated that it can turn concern into practical proposals. When the future of the former Tithebarn building became uncertain, we developed a proposal for its use as a people’s history and heritage centre, working on the idea as a community-led alternative future for the building. Although the circumstances surrounding the building have developed since then, the project helped crystallise a much wider ambition: Preston needs a place where its history can be explored, shared and connected with the people and organisations already doing heritage work across the city.

That is the thinking behind this project.

The proposed Heritage Hub in Preston Covered Market is intended as a practical, achievable first step towards a future permanent Heritage Centre. Rather than creating another organisation working in isolation, we want to act as a bridge between the public and Preston’s existing heritage resources, organisations, archives, museums, researchers and community groups.

We are a relatively new organisation, but we have already built a substantial local network and demonstrated our ability to research, communicate, organise and bring people together around Preston’s heritage. This project will allow us to turn that existing energy into something people can see, visit and participate in.

Our ambition is simple: to help make Preston’s remarkable heritage more visible, accessible and relevant to the people who live here and the people who visit.

Project Owner: Preserving Preston’s Heritage CIC
The Project Owner takes legal responsibility for receiving and spending the funds raised and ensuring the project is delivered.

Visit the SpaceHive website:

https://www.spacehive.com/preston-heritage-hub-heritage-centre-pilot