Tracey Preston Cook e-mails: I am writing to you from Cape Town, South Africa and I have recently been doing some family research into my family name of Preston.

I have found out that Ben Preston, a famous poet in the 1800’s is in fact my, great great great grandfather’s brother.

Ben’s brother’s name was John Preston who had a son named John Emanuel Preston. John Preston owned a home called Little Beck Hall and I cannot seem to find any information on this home on google map – it keeps bringing up the entire view of Gilstead Lane.

I was hoping that someone could provide me with information on the Preston’s or their homes in the area? I have found out the following from a book named “The Ancient Bingley”.

Ben Preston.

THE PRESTONS OF GILSTEAD. William Preston, of Bradford, soon after the birth of his son Benjamin, born August 10th, 1819, removed to Waterside, near Girlington, where his other eminent son, John, was born April 3rd, 1822.

Ben Preston is supposed to have inherited his grandfather Preston's rhyming propensities.

Ben was apprenticed for six years as a woolsorter, and during his apprenticeship he sent poetic effusions to a local paper.

Our mutual friend, Abraham Holroyd, secured the publication of some of Ben's longer dialect poems in broad-sheets and pamphlets, which with others were issued in book form in 1872. Preston's health giving way, he at length realized his yearning for a country house. Mr. Alfred Harris, jun., having had 2 1 acres awarded him from Bingley common lands, he sold the allotment to Benjamin Preston, who built a house thereon, and removed thereto in May, 1865. He had many visitors from Bradford, and to satisfy some of them he obtained a beer licence. Soon after his settlement here, I first made his acquaintance, and that of his brother John who had a house close by. A rich uncle was specially kind to the two brothers, and Ben built another house close to Eldwick Beck, which he named Hammondale, a name that gives a pun on his uncle's name, and trade of brewer. The public-house he left for some one with less antipathy to the twaddle indulged in there. He is pre-eminently the Burns of Bradford dialect.

JOHN PRESTON, his brother, had a fair schooling, and from his earliest years had a literary and philosophic cast of mind. He made Nature and Art his constant study. He owned a chemist's shop in Bradford, studied homeopathy, painted stage scenery at the theatre, practised photography, publicly acted and recited ; and left the Baptist creed of his parents to become a student of Swedenborg's teachings.

About 1852 he married Maria Marchbank, who had but one child, John Emanuel, whose paintings like those of his father, are eagerly purchased ; and whose researches on Eldwick moor for prehistoric remains have added to our knowledge of primitive man in Airedale.

In 1862, John Preston bought two allotments on Gilstead Moor where he built his home, Littlebeck Hall, then with a flat roof, but afterwards enlarged.

John became founder and president of the Swedenborgian Church at Saltaire ; and he was their most regular speaker. On April 29th, 1888, he succumbed under an attack of bronchitis, and was buried in Bingley Cemetery. Instead of the usual black-edged funeral card, so common in Victoria's reign, a cheerful gold- edged card, with gold letters, records In memory of John Preston, Artist, Theologian and Philosopher, who passed away from this Natural Life to the Spiritual, April 29, 1888, aged 66 years. His remains were interred at Bingley Cemetery, May 2nd.

John Emanuel (John’s son) remained on with this wife, Elizabeth Kate, and their 11 (I think) children. They apparently moved to Cornwall in 1923. No records of what happened to Little Beck Hall, if it was sold etc?

I can be contacted by e-mail at jigsaw@polka.co.za