Wigan Album

Brilliant photo Keith.

My beloved Wallgate..you're very clever Keith..it's a brilliant shot

Nice work Keith.

So many people about - if only it was like that now! What would those people think of the Internet - they would be bewildered - in e way that some 'oldies' are now sad to say! You are obviously attuned to it all Keith!

If you get chance watch watch the film it's really good .

1902 wigan wallgate you tube

Thank you all for your very nice comments. The thing that I noticed, and others commented on, was the number of people around but also how well dressed everybody is. The steam train in the distance, as the film continued, came all the way down to the Clarence and if anything there were even more numbers of people around, including one gentleman who hopped on to it as it was moving.

Ooops, I meant steam tram not train.

Keith.I've read that in those days there were a lot of big families living in small houses. Except for eating and sleeping, a lot of time was spent out of the house.

Thank you Jack, you raise an interesting point with regard to housing and although the report I quote from applied to the 19th century this photo was only a few years into the 20th. The full report is available online at https://www.hslc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/129-8-Jackson.pdf
The report about 19th century housing conditions in Wigan and St Helens was written by a certain John T Jackson BA,. Ph.D. who commented “At the end of the nineteenth century Wigan and St Helens had the highest rates of overcrowding of all the large Lancastrian town and, particularly in Wigan's case, some of the country's worst housing conditions.
By 1801 Wigan had emerged from a period of economic stagnation to become a bustling cotton and linen manufacturing town of 11,000 people. Approximately 60 per cent of all family heads were involved in textile manufacture, 40 per cent as hand- loom weavers. Only 7 per cent were now occupied in traditional metal-working trades with a further 7 per cent in coal mining, an industry soon to expand.This economic resurgence produced a house building boom
Jackson gives a few housing examples……
In Scholes there was Greenough's Row, 37 houses owned by Peter Greenough, a cotton and linen manufacturer of Standishgate; in Hallgate there was Birch's Croft, 20 houses belonging to Thomas Birch, a bleacher, of Gidlow House, and Johnson's Croft, another 20 houses owned by William Johnson, a cotton manu- facturer of Wigan Lane.
He provides a photo of Victoria Street, Wallgate, “Built in the cotton factory boom of the late 1830’s, these houses were soon occupied by Irish immigrants, two families per house being common” Your point exactly Jack
For anyone interested in the social conditions of the time in Wigan and St Helens, the report is an interesting read.

A piece of interesting local history. Thanks Keith.