Wigan Album

Hi Ron
It is the destruction of the little arcade that angers me most.Vandals!!! In somewhere like York this would have been treasured and restored.I was saddened when they destroyed the Market Hall as well. Generations of my family shopped in there over the years.

That little arcade to me ever since I was a child was magic...I would go to the shop that can be seen on the left..they used to have a glass cabinet that's just out of sight and I was enchanted with things that were in it,when I started work at the age of fifteen,Gorners cafe was the best place to get my dinner,my Mam always got weighed on the scales at the bottom of the arcade...Margaret Razak used to have nice tops on the right side going down..it was a truly magical place and as has been said all for an empty galleries that is soulless,and they wonder why we grumble...while other towns protect their history ours just kill it.

They sure spoiled Wigan-if only we had these places for our grandchildren and theirs too.

Hi tricia, Wigan town planners disgust me with the brazen attitude of demolishing beautiful buildings. Wigan could have rivalled towns such as Chester if they hadn't been able to get their way. I have very fond memories of 'old' Wigan and I'm just going back to the '70's and '80's, the town planners have managed to 'cock it up' in such a grand style in a very short space of time. Very sad indeed.

Hi Russ
You are so right. It seems to me that they cannot spend enough of ratepayer's money.
There used to be some beautiful buildings in Wigan when I was small and one of our teachers ancouraged us to always look up at the top of the buildings. I still do.
If you were dropped in the middle of Wigan these days you could be in any one of several boring, 'cloned' towns.
Thank Heavens they did not get their way with the Queen's Hall where we had our school Speech Days.

I fully agree with all your comments. What a waste! Also the fate of the old Empress building on station road was a shame. What a restoration that would have been! So many old buildings destroyed to be replaced with part-filled shopping centres, depressing. As you say, York is a prime example of what could have been. Great photo by the way.

what annoys me more than anything about Wigan in recent years is the building of the Grand Arcade, when a perfectly good shopping arcade which is hardly 20 years old and stands less than 50 yards away,is practically empty.
Why couldn't the shops in the Grand Arcade simply have moved in to the Galleries? I'm sorry to be negative but i couldn't see the point of spending all that money.The Grand Arcade is never advertised at Christmas like the Trafford centre is and others..it makes my blood boil.