Art Holiday Travel and Vacation information for Lancashire

A county of England, lying on the Irish Sea, and bounded by Cumberland, Westmoreland, Yorkshire, and Cheshire. It is 75 miles in length, and 30 in breadth. It is divided into 6 hundreds, which contain 27 market towns, 62 parishes, and 894 villages. This county comprises a variety of soil and face of country; there being mountains of more than 2000 feet high, in the north and eastern parts, with wide moorlands or heaths amongst them; extensive bogs or mosses, which yield only turf for fuel, and are very dangerous; and some most fertile land for agricultural purposes. it yields iron, coal, slate, and other building-stones; salt, &c. &c. Grazing is more attended to than agriculture. The fisheries, both in the rivers and the sea, are valuable. As a commercial and manufacturing county, Lancashire is distinguished beyond most others in the kingdom. Its principal manufactures are linen, silk, and cotton goods; fustians, counterpanes, shalloons, baize, serges, tapes, small wares, hats, sail-cloth, sacking, pins, iron goods, cast plate-glass, &c. Of the commerce of this county, it may suffice to observe, that Liverpool is now the second port in the United Kingdom. The principal rivers are the Mersey, Irwell, Ribble, Lune, Leven, Wyre, Hodder, Roche, Duddon, Winster, Kent, and Calder, and it has two considerable lakes, Windermere and Coniston Water. Lancaster is the county town. Population, 1,667,054. It returns 26 members to parliament.
(From Barclay's Complete and Universal Dictionary of 1842.)

Lots of variety, from lively family entertainment to unspoilt moorland, from the rich choice of things to do in Manchester and Liverpool, and Blackpool's carefree summer fun, to charming peaceful villages With generally low prices and welcoming people, Lancashire offers visitors all-round good value. It has a rich and lively medley of interesting places to visit, with a very wide appeal.

Most are concentrated in Manchester and Liverpool, which have grand Victorian buildings and are increasingly enjoyable to visit - best in summer, and best for day visits, particularly at the weekend, when traffic is very light and both are quite quick to get into by car, with easy parking. Both have very good public transport, too. Outside these cities, the recreation of 1900s life at Wigan Pier is quite engrossing, and other choice places include the Birkenhead warships, Bury's steam railway, Hoghton Tower, Leighton Hall, the Martin Mere wildfowl centre, the safari park at Prescot, Rufford Old Hall, and the Leighton Moss nature reserve above Silverdale. Plans for Smithills Hall in Bolton look exciting.Keeping children entertained is easy in this area. Particular favourites are the Camelot theme park at Charnock Richard, and in Manchester the Granada studios and the science and industry museum; there's a very wide choice of other good places, too.There's magnificent countryside even just outside the big cities. The S. Lancs moors have plenty of scope for exhilarating drives and walks, bewitched Pendle Hill has always held the imagination, and other areas of fine countryside include the great whaleback of Longridge Fell, and the wooded Beacon Fell country park.The Forest of Bowland has magnificent Pennine moorland. It's less visited than most areas of comparable scenery, as much of the moorland, privately owned, is closed to walkers. Development in some of the villages (also in private hands) is controlled too strictly for any significant expansion of holiday accommodation - let alone a proliferation of camp sites and so forth. These restrictions make the area particularly appealing for people who want peace and quiet, and it's not impossible to find good walks.Another little-visited peaceful oasis is the Silverdale/Arndale area, up beyond the attractive town of Lancaster: hilly countryside well suited both to walkers and to drivers, and a coastline that's particularly interesting to bird-watchers and naturalists.There are some glorious stretches of sand in the area, and the famous traditional seaside resorts are a tremendous draw to some, but it's not really a place for family beach holidays. Blackpool, with more visitors each year than the whole of Spain, is now more a place for young adults to have summer fun, with lots of discos, fun pubs and so forth as well as its vivid array of entertainment's. Out of season, when those long stretches of beach and dune are empty, they have a certain lonely charm, and there's an element of fascination about the treacherous tidal sands of Morecambe Bay.