In the Middle Ages, Preston was a parish and township in the hundred of Amounderness and was granted a Guild Merchant charter in 1179, giving it the status of a market town.

For example, the road from Luguvalium to Mamucium (now Carlisle to Manchester) crossed the River Ribble at Walton-le-Dale, 3⁄4 mile (1 km) southeast of the centre of Preston, and a Roman camp or station may also have been here.

[16] When first mentioned in the 1086 Domesday Book, Preston was already the most important town in Amounderness (the area of Central Lancashire between the rivers Ribble and Cocker, including The Fylde and the Forest of Bowland).

Letitia Elizabeth Landon alludes to this latter defeat in her poetical illustration, Preston, to an engraving of a painting by Thomas Allom, in Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book 1834.

[22] Another Jacobite eyewitness noted in a private letter from Preston on 27 November 1745: "People here are beginning to join [us] very fast; we have got about sixty recruits today".

[25] The more oppressive side of industrialisation was seen during the Preston Strike of 1842 on Saturday 13 August 1842, when a group of cotton workers demonstrated against the poor conditions in the town's mills.

The official Met Office weather station is located at Moor Park, less than 1 mile (1.6 km) north of the city centre, and surrounded by built-up areas, suggesting a degree of urban warming is likely, particularly during clear and calm nights.

As early as 1837 the first Latter-day Saint missionaries to Great Britain began preaching in Preston and, in particular, other small towns situated along the River Ribble.

[59] One of the many large active Roman Catholic parish churches is St Thomas of Canterbury and the English Martyrs, located on Garstang Road.

It has its own Grade II listing, the designation record describing it as "very tall, forms group with associated mill, both being very prominent landmarks to the north-west of the town".

The city was home to Alstom Transport's main UK spare parts distribution centre (formerly GEC Traction Ltd) until it transferred operations to Widnes in July 2018.

On 20 February 2006, the telecommunications retailer The Carphone Warehouse took over Tulketh Mill (formerly the home of the Littlewoods catalogue call centre) in the Ashton-on-Ribble area of the city.

The site's main purpose was as a call centre for the broadband and landline services provider TalkTalk as well as The Post Office and Student Loans Company.

Haulage supplier and operator James Hall and Co who supply produce for Spar stores in the north of England have their head office – the biggest building in the city of Preston[78] – located just off the M6 Junction 31a at Bowland View.

[citation needed] The Westinghouse Electric Company (formerly BNFL) Springfields nuclear processing plant also lies to the west of the city boundary at Salwick.

Market vendors sell fresh and local quality meat, fish, fruit, vegetables, and dairy products, other hot and cold food to eat in or take away, as well as brewed ales and artisan coffee.

[98] In November 2011, it was announced that John Lewis, who were originally intended to be the major flagship store of the Tithebarn development had also withdrawn from the project, effectively killing it.

[99] The council is now exploring more piecemeal ways of bringing in development[100] and former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn praises Preston for its "inspiring innovation".

[113] With the closure of the docks in 1981 and its subsequent redevelopment, most of the tracks were removed and now only a small section remains, used by the Ribble Steam Railway (RSR) and for bitumen trains operating to and from the Total refinery at the Riversway industrial park.

[citation needed] Sedimentation and the shallowness of the Ribble limited access to Victoria Quay to when the tide was high, and it was proposed that the river be diverted and an artificial tidal basin created whose water level could be controlled to allow 24-hour loading and unloading operations.

However, the on-going issue of sedimentation required constant dredging of the Ribble and along with loss of trade to large ports around the country, the docks never returned a profit, leading to their closure in October 1981.

[citation needed] From 1820 packet boats carried passengers between Preston and Kendal, providing faster journeys than the stagecoaches of the day, and by 1833 travel time had been reduced to seven hours.

[118] At Preston the canal originally terminated at a large boat basin located in the city centre between Marsh Lane and the A59 Ring Road, on the western side of Corporation Street.

Following the Second World War, as many industries around Preston closed, this section of the canal became derelict and in the 1960s it was filled in and a new terminus with mooring facilities built at Ashton.

[citation needed] The Link is approximately 4 miles (6.4 km) in length, starting from the Lancaster Canal near Ingol and entering the Ribble (as the Savick Brook) south of Lea Gate.

The proposal met with considerable resistance from the local community (with 74% of residents objecting) and leisure and environmental groups due to the potential loss of green space, impact upon ecosystems (especially fish populations) and increased risk of flooding resulted in protests and campaigns being organised to have the project cancelled.

[119][120] In December 2007 the Preston City Council pulled out of a major part of the Riversworks plan, the highly contentious Ribble Barrage, and stated the revised plan would only look at improving Preston Docklands (in particular, the on-going blue green algae problem) and extending the Lancaster Canal from its current terminus at Ashton into the city at the back of the University of Central Lancashire (near the site of the former boat basin which was filled in prior to the construction of the current campus).

An independent company, John Fishwick & Sons, that provided frequent services into the city centre from Lower Penwortham, Lostock Hall, Leyland, Euxton and Chorley, ceased trading in October 2015.

[citation needed] Dick, Kerr's Ladies, one of the successful early women's football teams in Britain, called Preston home, starting in 1917.

The opening match of the tour was played at Deepdale, the home of Preston North End, in front of 25,000 spectators, a record for the ground at that time.