Great Preston is a small rural village in the

City of Leeds The City of Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. The metropolitan borough includes the administrative centre of Leeds and the towns of Farsley, Garforth, Guiseley, Horsforth, Morley, Otley, Pudsey, Rothwell, W ...

West Yorkshire West Yorkshire is a metropolitan and ceremonial county in the Yorkshire and Humber Region of England. It is an inland and upland county having eastward-draining valleys while taking in the moors of the Pennines. West Yorkshire came into exi ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. It has incorporated the once neighbouring hamlet of Little Preston.

Location

Great Preston is situated 9 miles south east of Leeds city centre and is 2 miles south of the town

Garforth Garforth () is a town in the metropolitan borough of the City of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It sits in the Garforth and Swillington ward of Leeds City Council and the Elmet and Rothwell parliamentary constituency. As of 2011, the popula ...

. The villages of Kippax and Swillington are also in close proximity, and, due to development of land into housing to the south of the village, Great Preston now borders

Allerton Bywater Allerton Bywater is a semi-rural village and civil parish in the south-east of the City of Leeds metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 census was 4,717. The village itself is north ...

. The village is in the LS26 Leeds postcode area, and forms part of the

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authorit ...

of Great and Little Preston, which had a population of 1,463 at the 2011 Census.

Etymology

The name of Great Preston is first attested in the

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manus ...

of 1086, in the form ''Prestun'' and similar variants. The name comes from the

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th c ...

words ''prēost'' ('priest') and ''tūn'' ('farmstead, estate'). Thus it once meant 'estate belonging to a priest'. The name ''Little Preston'', coined to differentiate this settlement from its larger neighbour, is first attested between 1258 and 1265, as ''Preston Luttle''. Meanwhile, the form ''Great Preston'' is first attested in 1488.Harry Parkin, ''Your City's Place-Names: Leeds'', English Place-Name Society City-Names Series, 3 (Nottingham: English Place-Names Society, 2017), p. 50.

Amenities

Great Preston has one

pub A pub (short for public house) is a kind of drinking establishment which is licensed to serve alcoholic drinks for consumption on the premises. The term ''public house'' first appeared in the United Kingdom in late 17th century, and was ...

, a local

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by str ...

and football team and a village hall. There is a

C of E The Church of England (C of E) is the established Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Britain ...

primary school based in an old Victorian building with a modern extension.Great Preston Primary School
website St Aidan's church was closed in 1992, and changed into a community centre in 1998. The Working Men's club has also shut down and has been replaced by a snooker club.

Location grid

References

External links

Great and Little Preston Parish Council WebsiteOfficial Great Preston Cricket Club Website

at

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