The Preston Guild Festival: meeting of the Royal North Lancashire Agricultural Society on the Holmsfield, Penwortham, 1862. The rain utterly ruined what would otherwise have proved a most successful meeting...Those who are acquainted with Preston will know the Holme whereon the society had pitched its tent. It is a plot of pasture-ground skirted by the Ribble. Some thirty acres of this were inclosed, and the Horticultural and Fiorticultural Society obtained a portion of it for their marquee...The attendance on Wednesday was comparatively small, and on Thursday it was smaller. During the night the freshes had carried away the temporary bridge erected by the society, and obliged visitors to get across by boat or to make a circuitous route by Penwortham-bridge. The ground lying in ridge and furrow was bad enough the previous day, but on Thursday it was frightful. The persevering critic was fain to make literally flying visits from shed to shed, as the furrows lay full of water. The sheep and pigs, which had passed a terrible night of exposure, pent up within a small space, presented a miserable picture, and the attendants, who had been doing their best to make them comfortable, looked drenched to the skin. From "Illustrated London News", 1862.