Preston has played host to a plethora of pub signs through the years, especially considering the city once held a reputation for having a different pub for every day of the year!
Pub names depict everything from local folklore, historic events, royalty and notable characters.
A simple pub sign can hold the key to a town’s past and when it comes to the history of pub names, each one is different.
We’ve dipped into the archives to find some of the best old pub signs that welcome punters to cross the threshold.
5. The Sumpter Horse
The Sumpter Horse pub in Penwortham has a fabulously strange name. The word 'sumpter' originally meant the driver of a packhorse. But later it came to mean the horse itself, and later still it meant the pack carried by the horse. And that seems to be the meaning when the inn took on its name Photo: Neil Cross
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7. Black-A-Moor Head
With an unusual name for a pub The Black-A-Moor Head stands on Lancaster Road in the city centre. The sign shows the head of a dark skinned man in Saracen robes. And blackamoors were usually fighting bodyguards for the Knights Templar during in the Crusades Photo: Donna Clifford
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