Whilst looking at BlogPreston, I found a feature on lost places in Preston which immediately jumped out at me. In Lost Preston (part two) there is mention of a bus stop which names a public house that no longer exists. The public house was called 'Doctor Syntax', which was intriguing me due to the linguistic reference. This seemed a bizarre name for a pub.
Then, finding the Pubs in Preston blog, I discovered a photograph of an incarnation of this pub which showed an image of a man on a horse on it's hanging sign, with Doctor Syntax written underneath. The blog detailed that the pub and had been located at 63 (and later 241) Flyde Road.
On further research it became clear that the horse wasn't a specialist in sentence construction, but that the horse was a successful race horse in the 1800's which was named after a popular satirical poem from the time. This poem was called 'The Tour of Doctor Syntax in search of the Picturesque', written by William Combe*.
The concept of a 'tour' appealed to me - a bus stop tour (of the Doctor syntax bus stop), the satirical tour within the poem and it's reference to authoritative language, a tour around a public house which doesn't exist and has been in two places. A tour of the bus stop of some sort could be organised or information designed on the information within the information of the bus stop and the poem?
* William Combe, Syntax (Dr. Fict. Name.) **
** Quote from the cover of 'The Tour of Doctor Syntax in search of the Picturesque, a poem'
