Wigan Album

Someone should be arrested for VANDALISM OF WIGAN TOWN CWNTRE !!

Looks like Putin sent a missile over. It’s a tragedy how the structure of the town’s identity has been destroyed with people who have no idea what they’re about. The Victorian planners would be dumbfounded.

Victorian planners? Nothing much was planned in Victorian times - folk (and councils) did more or less what they liked on the land and property they owned. The gaudy red-brick buildings on Library Street folk here so admire were not all built on green fields - they replaced earlier properties, probably full of olde-world charm, and much-mourned by the Wiganners of those days... and, if they had still been around today, you'd be shouting for them to be preserved.
The Victorians were also notorious for "restoring" old churches - ripping out what had grown organically over the centuries, and replacing it with pseudo-Gothic rubbish. The famous William Morris even founded The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings to try to stop them.

Is the rumour that is going around true, i.e., that the council's money they put aside for the project is running out due to higher costs, or is it just that - a rumour with no basis.

I was hoping that the clock tower would be saved as I quite like it and to me it has an Italianesque look about it, but accordingly it too is to be toppled.

Built to last though Reverend unlike what is going up nowadays. Somehow I don’t think any other style of building would have been appropriate other than the sturdy red ( and ornate) brick buildings for municipal purposes and an industrial town. What else could have been used to look as smart. I quite like Mock Tudor but perhaps it wasn’t practical enough for the Victorians. Just my opinion.

Hear, hear, David.
Veronica, those "built to last" buildings have a lifespan, regardless of how long they were 'built to last'. Next time you look at the 'built to last' frontages, think about what lies behind them.

You are so right Veronica.

Those building in Library Street with very attractive terracotta facings were built on a myriad of appalling slums thrown up to accommodate the Irish diaspora escaping extreme poverty particularly the famine.

According to a 1827 map all that land was known as Boothers Croft which before Market Street and Mesnes Street were constructed was only accessible from narrow lane off Standishgate known as Hope Street.

Colin - there's no such thing as 'appalling slums' - they were bijoux residences ripe for gentrification and fit for another hundred years of useful life. Oh, and how we'd die to see those lovely little narrow lanes once again....
That's what many folk believe of the houses removed in 1960/70s 'slum clearances', anyway.

The Galleries finished in 1990 lasted only 33 years, I remember when the old market hall was demolished in 1988 and with nothing there can see the site of the old market, the market square car park and bus station. Woodcock Street used to be here with a tall building that was Crank & Burtons.

I don’t think any of the present modern buildings could be used for facades in any future buildings in the future. I am well aware that the interiors are just mainly ‘space’ inside with plaster board for other smaller rooms.

Try travelling back to 1900, that area was not fields, those narrow picturesque lanes such as Elbow Lane which ran from Wallgate to Millgate had been built and were disease ridden hell holes with hovels down each side infested with cockroaches and vermin with open sewers running down the middle like the back streets of old Bombay. Hoards of shoeless, unwashed malnourished children and drunken fathers out of work but scraping enough to populate the pubs. The stench in summer and the wet winters down there, a nightmarish scene out of Dickens.
Thanks goodness for the the grand old buildings on Library Street that replaced them.

Right lets get back to the picture!
I would like to see some new development on that land formally know as Boother's Croft, take a look at Chorley. They have rebuilt the town centre but retained much of the car parking area one which currently hosts a large Christmas Fair with shops, bars and restaurants on three sides.
This now open and vacant land could be transformed in a similar manner, by all means build a new market hall but retain the existing one and clock tower as a multi purpose venue.
Now that all the Galleries and Grand Arcade have been demolished that clock tower has come into its own as major landmark and perhaps we could have Silcocks Fair, Black Peas and all back in Spring and Autumn!

You have to admit it does look like a bomb site, war zone or earthquake.
You seem to have it in for the Victorians Rev Long but they did build with some certain style & though Mr Scott did Victorianise the insides of churches they do look pleasing in their own way...& nobody would have thought of demolising them after a few years.
I think Wigan has just lost its way in the planning stakes...perhaps planners come & go & want to leave their style then perhaps the next lot don't go along with whats there & its forever changing. I don't profess to know the answer but it seems a great waste of the money to me.

Towns have always changed. More often than not a more substantial building replaced an inferior one. The problem today is that the reasons for town centres developing and giving a place an identity are disappearing. People no longer work and shop locally.
For me the problem facing the planners, not just in Wigan, is how to redesign town centres that gives the population a sense of pride and one they want to use. It shouldn’t be one that focuses on the leisure industries. Quality shops are the key but how do you attract them?

ps…..and I don’t mean in a covered shopping precinct

You know what they say ‘Use It Or Lose It’.
For whatever reason, Wigan surely lost it!

Folk still go looking for shops but in other towns…the towns with councils that have more sense ie Chorley even small towns that have just go better. The big towns just got worse…

The Council Giveth and the Council Taketh Away. All at our expense of course!
They need a visit from the Three Wise Men, No not the Architect, the Chief Financial Officer and the Chinaman. Myself, Ron and Brian could join me on the steps of the Town Hall. Or better still the Three Wise Women, Irene, Veronica and Maureen, I am sure they would give them all a good talking to! They would not know what had hit 'em.

The only thing is in my case Colin I no longer live in Wigan. I’ve always come to Wigan for the last 53 years at least twice a week. Transported by car, bus, bicycle and train… I have even walked it once! I used to get home sick if I didn’t come back believe it or not. I haven’t been for the last few weeks - the longest ever. The ONLY time I have felt it’s not worth it sadly. How many others feel the same.

Please forgive me if this incorrect, but I have heard through the grapevine that the proposed new development on the former Galleries site isn’t going ahead until 2026 due to investment issues. Maybe this is just speculation, but if it is true it is going to do nothing for Wigan’s current economic bad fortunes.

I was told that the demolition of the Market Hall had been put back to 2025 but as the council may well have run out of money maybe due to inflation and the Chinese pulling out plus no sign of a new market hall being built it could very well be 2026 or even later.
Lets see if our council tax soars over the next few years to pay for it!

Colin Have the Chinese completely pulled their money out ?

Philip, last I heard the Chinese could not do the work at the contracted price due to inflation. I think the council needs to stump up many more millions.
Maybe they will scale back the plans, I doubt that we will see a hotel or cinema but you never know.
Would be good idea for Wigan Council to put a spokesperson up on WW so that all our speculations could be addressed authoritatively.

Its about time all the labour councilers stood down and let some other people run the council because these poeple have not got a clue.

Unfortunately it is we the Wigan public who elect them and then we never hear from them again until the next election.
I don't know if there is some kind of public Forum were the electorate can voice there opinions on specific matters such as the town centre redevelopment but there should be.

Colin my bet, it will ALL be Social Housing Was told this, 2 years ago, by one of the erstwhile Market Traders.... The thing is by the time it has been built????? All the councilors that made this decision will have retired or moved on to do the same thing to another town. Any criticism of the then Councillors, will get the reply "It wasn't us who made the decision"

Scaramouche that sounds about right. Wigan as we knew and loved has practically gone.

Is Social Housing still a politically correct term or should, in the words of the Rev David Long these be Bijoux Residences ripe for Gentrification!!!!
I am no snob and spent most of my pre-marital life in council property but can only imagine these proposed jerry built blocks of flats each equipped with its own ground floor pie shop and betting shop and washing hanging out of the windows. We can all see what the Oak Hotel has been turned into, yet another unsightly slum!

I find it hard to believe that people still exist who think 'councillors' run the council. Although, this is Wigan is it not?

a once proud and thriving town reduced to a wasteland --- it makes me sick at heart to see how the town has changed so entirely as to be unrecognisable in my lifetime.

Colin Have the Chinese completely pulled their money out ?

Not clue Philip, the council seems to be silent on the issue as far as the public are concerned.
Maybe they are waiting to be voted out, then it’s not their problem and leave it the councillors from Leigh and Andy B. to determine our future!!!