Parks have long shone in summer and deserved our year-round love

This is the time of year when appreciation of our parks is at its height, as it has been for

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However one commentator from Victorian times clearly impressed by Preston's parks thought not enough people did appreciate them.

Writing in in 1892 the scribe noted: "It is a matter for regret that a greater number of our townspeople do not visit the parks, when as a present they are in all their summer glory and perfection.

"Few apparently appear to be aware that Preston possess three public enclosures, which for natural beauty or as illustrations of clever landscape gardening would be difficult to equal, let alone surpass, in the whole of the United Kingdom.

"It is easy to forget when wandering along the many pretty walks, canopied in their loveliness of the leafy month of June, that we are in a garden at the very door of a great population. The surroundings are such as lead one's thoughts to peaceful sylvan glade; far from the smoke, from turmoil; and from the madding crowd.

"How many of those who these summer evenings stroll along under the avenue of limes on Avenham Walks are to remember that some of the old trees were there before a single factory was erected in the town. Still pollarded limes may be seen breaking into leaf as prettily as their sapling companions planted not many years ago.

"The limes which have been so tastefully planted along the old tram road are full of promise, and in a few years will make one of the finest avenues in this part of the country. Many of them are already fairly established and growing well.