Legends of Lancashire

Legends of Lancashire is a book by Peter Landreth, first published in 1841. Written in a Victorian spirit of antiquarian curiosity, the collection gathers local tales, ghost stories, battle-lore, and rural superstitions from across Lancashire.

Landreth moves between sober local history and the romantic or uncanny—recounting witches, spectre-coaches, boundary-walls, and the odd prophetic telling—preserving the county’s oral traditions at a moment when industrial change threatened to wash them away.

The result is both a compendium for readers of regional history and an atmospheric volume for lovers of English folklore, Lancashire folktales, and ghostly moorland stories. Carefully grounded in the period’s tastes, the book influenced later local historians and folklorists by rescuing forgotten anecdotes and connecting them to landscapes and sites still visible today.

Readers seeking Victorian-era folklore, Lancashire legends, Pendle and Furness witch-lore, or simply vivid accounts of northern English customs will find this work a useful primary-source glimpse into nineteenth-century attitudes toward myth, memory, and place.