Proud moment for city as Lancaster is picked to have its very own Monopoly board game

The city came out top in a 10-strong north west shortlist to land its own game – beating, amongst others, Chester. which came a very close runner-up.

A consultation period lasting two weeks will now get under way for the public to suggest Lancaster landmarks - such as Lancaster Castle, the Ashton Memorial and Lancaster University - to feature in MONOPOLY: Lancaster Edition.

Monopoly have been producing local versions of the original game for around 20 years, and so far there are about 40 UK cities in the range – including Preston and Blackpool.

There are also specially themed boards such as Disney.

At an official launch at the Ashton Memorial on Wednesday morning, Ella Gibbs, who is the custom games executive at Winning Moves UK, said the selection process for picking new cities looked at various factors.

These include Pride, Beauty, Sense of Community and Distinct Heritage.

"We sit together and pick a couple of places each year," Ella explained. "We look for local pride - which there's a lot of here - history and heritage, and landmarks.

"We do a lot of research but it's heavily done by the number of suggestions we receive as well."

Ella added: “We are very excited to be announcing this. We have been wanting to do Lancaster for ages now.

"There are so many great landmarks and Lancaster has the most wonderful sense of community spirit.

"Everyone is very proud to be from Lancaster

“It’s culturally historic, from its ancient castle to universities and bustling high street to green open public spaces like the magnificent Williamson Park.

“We expect to be wonderfully spoilt for choice putting this board together.”

Mayor of Lancaster Coun Joyce Pritchard said: “The creation of a Lancaster edition of, arguably, the world’s favourite family board game is great news for the area.

“With so many iconic landmarks and visitor destinations to choose from, I think we can all look forward to seeing an exciting game being created from everything our wonderful city has to offer and to enjoying a tour with a difference of Lancaster’s most popular attractions.”

"This is a wonderful district and well deserving of being on a Monopoly board.

"To be chosen is so exciting and I can't say how lucky we are.

"I am very proud of this area and I think people will be really pleased about this.

"To be able to see Lancaster on a Monopoly board is fantastic. It's a proud moment."

The new game will see Lancaster landmarks such as Lancaster Castle, Lancaster University, the Maritime Museum, Lancaster Priory and Williamson Park’s iconic Ashton Memorial replacing the likes of ‘Mayfair’ and ‘Park Lane’ from the classic Monopoly.

The sets will be themed in genres, from shopping to sport, the arts to leisure – and lots more, including a ‘travel’ set made up of the four Monopoly train stations.

That’s because Lancaster doesn’t have a multitude of main line stations to select from like in the classic London Monopoly.

Natural landmarks such as the River Lune could also be chosen.

You could also send players to the former prison cells at Lancaster Castle, rather than the Monopoly jail!

The Chance and Community Chest cards are being customised at a later date too.

The game will hit the shops this October in time for Christmas.

But before it goes into production the public is being invited to nominate Lancaster landmarks and cards to feature in the game.

You can do this in one of these two ways - by email to [email protected] or via the official Lancaster Monopoly Facebook page.

Suggestions can be made until 11.59pm on February 21.

Monopoly is a multi-player economics-themed board game, with history that can be traced back to 1903.

It is derived from The Landlord's Game, created by Lizzie Magie in the United States as a way to demonstrate that an economy that rewards individuals is better than one where monopolies hold all the wealth, and to promote the economic theories of Henry George – in particular, his ideas about taxation.

The Landlord's Game originally had two sets of rules, one with tax and another on which the current rules are mainly based.

When Parker Brothers first published Monopoly in 1935, the game did not include the less capitalistic taxation rule, resulting in a more aggressive game.

Parker Brothers were eventually absorbed into Hasbro in 1991.

The game is named after the economic concept of a monopoly - the domination of a market by a single entity.

The Monopoly game board consists of 40 spaces containing 28 properties – 22 streets (grouped into eight distinct colour groups), four railways, and two utilities, as well as three Chance spaces, three Community Chest spaces, a Luxury Tax space, an Income Tax space, and the four corner squares: GO, (In) Jail/Just Visiting, Free Parking, and Go to Jail.