A slightly forgotten city of excellent pubs, doughty inhabitants and beautiful buildings
What’s going for it? Grander than you might think, Lancaster, if you think about it at all. Only intrepid tour coaches make it this far, leaving this slightly forgotten city of excellent pubs, doughty inhabitants and beautiful buildings largely for the Lancastrians. Its severe castle, high on the hill, looks ripped enough to withstand a meteorite, while the streets and squares below, curling round the foot of Castle Hill and spreading up to Dalton Square and the Town Hall, are thick with columned porticoes, churches and stone Georgian townhouses. This grandeur came at a cost, of course, one mostly paid by slaves. Lancaster was once the fourth largest slave trade port in England after London, Liverpool and Bristol, a fact it finally acknowledged in 2005 with a memorial to the millions amid the warehouses and wharves on St George’s Quay. Far more searing, though, is a tiny 18th-century grave to a slave who died soon after arriving, lonely amid salt marshes by the seashore just outside the city, at Sunderland Point. Residents and schoolchildren tend it still, with flowers and painted stones.
The case against… More could be made of the city’s riverfront; and recent developments and buildings don’t live up to the city’s heritage.
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