Wigan Album

I remember some shops like this just after St John's and the YMCA, they were at the bottom of Standishgate and the corner of Powell Street, there were different shops and I do remember that Hilton & Layland the estate agents was in one of them. The area of ground they stood on is still there and after demolition it was grassed over and benches put there.

A lot of older ladies turned their front rooms into a toffee shop. Miss Hunt on Hardybutts opposite St Patrick’s church. She was lovely - used to buy tiger nuts from there. I often wondered if she was unmarried because she lost a loved one in the 1st WW. The building although old was not as old as the one in the photo. It was demolished when the Vulcan was in the sixties.

“People turned their living room into a shop”... reminded me that was what my grandmother did around 1920 and it remained as such for 50 years. It was a very busy and well used local store and even provided employment for my alleged “frail” father, whose mother would not allow him to follow his older three brothers into the harsh steel mills of Llanelli. Instead my father, a Llanelli RU player and Final Welsh Trialist, signed for Wigan RL and played out his 10 year contract with them in 1948, not bad for a “frail” son.

The incline looks to being just below the Royal Oak, it levelled off to Monks bakery and Powell Street.
We used to buy delicious penny loaves from Monks.

I had forgotten it was Monks Baker but recall the taste and smell of those freshly baked penny loaves, a real treat before going up Brick Kiln Lane to school on a bitterly cold winter morning.
Keith who was that 'Frail' son?