Wigan Album

...and the rot sets in. What has happened to Wigan is tragic and unforgivable.

What was built back then was empty for a long time, and indications are that the newest shopping centre will soon be largely empty. There is not much reason to visit Wigan these days, nothing to see. I wonder what odds you could get that a new Station Road will soon emerge filled with affordable apartments?

Commercial Yard where my husband worked as a young lad, with Latimer's Grocers on the corner where I bought fresh yeast, (which my Mam always called "barm"). for bread-making in Domestic Science at school, and the lemon-and-navy dress I bought from Paige's Dress Shop.....so many memories in one very sad photo.

Another doozer that Daniel, it looks like it's been taken from the same vantage point that Colin took the recent one's on PaD. They are very comparable.

There were some sturdy buildings along that stretch and the next block. The route to Latimer's especially…

A narrow gap to the Fleece yard may be just visible.

Question for Irene Roberts.
I wouldn't like to ask or assume a ladies age, however this photo was taken some 53 years ago as such I would expect you to have been a young lady at the time.
Do you recall what your thoughts were about this new shopping centre development at the time?
Were you excited about the modern new development or saddend by the demolition of the older buildings/shops?
I am interested to see if your viewpoint has changed and I wonder if todays twentysomethings will be excited about the new town centre development plans but eventually will look back with sadness and fond memories of the Galleries in 2070.

Phil, I can’t be much different in age to Irene, for me at the time I was bit put out to lose the Commercial Inn as I went in there quite a few times. Apart from that I saw it as the start of brand new future with an indoor shopping experience and for the first few years with its nice frontage onto Market Place it was just that.
Now, to me it seems like it has been and gone in the blink of an eye along with the Galleries. Talk about living in a disposable society!!

Thankyou for asking, Phil. I was 15 when my husband, ( who was then my boyfriend) Peter worked in Commercial Yard and I bought the yeast from Latimer's for breadmaking at school....it would have been 1968). It was around 1972 when I bought my beloved lemon-and-navy dress from Paige's as I was still living with my parents and I got married from their house at 21.
I will be honest and tell you that, although I have always liked old buildings, the modern shopping centre would have been accepted by me much more readily than it would in later years, and the shape of the Life Centre, ( which I think of as Lego Land now), would have looked modern and "moving with the times". But give me a girl of 18-20 in the 1960s/early 1970s who WOULDN'T have seen it like that! We were just caught up in the changes and the atmosphere of the 1960s. Like all girls then, I loved Chelsea Girl and Polly of Piccadilly, (not that I ever had much money to spend!), but it felt modern and "young" to see those shops in our town. However, I remember the sadness I felt when The Old Arcade was demolished and I was only 19 at the time, and I have always loved "quirky" places like The Wiend and Rowbottom Square and The Park Cafe and Bandstand....I have always had a "feel" for the old. I got married at 21 in 1974, (50 years ago on Friday!), and we had a short honeymoon in York and went to The Castle Museum where they had a mock-up of a Victorian Street and I LOVED IT! We bought a 1940s pub mirror and a copper warming pan on that York honeymoon which are still on the chimney-breast and from that day on , our house has looked like a museum and still does! I would say my acceptance of modern buildings replacing old lasted from being 18 until my early twenties, but no longer. I was just an Old-Fashioned Girl!

Phil,I am older than both Irene and Colin..our family home was very close to Wigan town centre so i sort of grew up with it.even yet I only go to town two or three times a week due to the fact that I have no transport now except for buses..ithe market hall and especially the food market were bliss to shop in,you could buy every vegetable that you needed..nowadays it's either supermarkets or Iceland.I miss Woolworth..and the scales near the door where my Mam would say "If you get lost stand there love".. British Home Stores where I went every Saturday with my Mam..and also where I would try every bat on while my Mam stood tittering..And Phil I could go on all day re what Wigan means to me,it was my playground as a child..I have so many memories of it I could literally write a book..and I'm very sorry to have carried on so long..I have to stop myself..as for what I miss the most the answer is ...all of it ,my beloved Wigan Town Centre.that I grew up with.

Phi, I DID reply with quite a long answer but it doesn't seem to have appeared yet!

Sincere apologies Irene, it was indeed impolite to speculate, you were just in flush of youth in 1971. I was 23. Grovel, Grovel, Grovel. XXX

Hardly a vast difference, Colin, Lol!! ........I was 19 in the October of 1971, having been born in October 1952. Only four years' difference. And yet when I attend 1940s events, I feel "right" in those 1940s clothes. I've just always had a feeling for the past.

Irene 1940's fashion I think was great. I was always up to date with the latest fashion trends, now when I go somewhere I think I might be in the wrong era!

I would have loved to have been born a generation earlier.’ Daft really because I wouldn’t have been a sixties girl. I loved working with that generation and the tales they used to tell even during the war when there was romance and tragedy - but they were ‘in it together’..the greatest generation in my eyes.
I love how they used their ingenuity to make their clothes last and they were beautiful. Natural looking girls with just a touch of lipstick
( beetroot when that lipstick ran out) and handsome men in uniform not forgetting the longing when they were away fighting for freedom and the letters they treasured.. I could go on. I’m just a romantic at heart!

Irene I also got married on 26.01.74

I got married 19/10/1974.
Looks like a few of us have cause to celebrate this year.