Wigan Album

I thought he lodged in Sovereign Road, not Warrington Road.

Here you go...

http://www.wiganworld.co.uk/oldgallery/soldphoto.php?pic=bkorwelldigsb.jpg&w=518&h=388&opt=g9

Sovereign Road.

Check out Georgrorwell.t35 Then go to Photos,then go to places. This website has certainly done a bit more research into Orwell and then consider your source.

Your photograph still shows a house situated in Sovereign Road. The shop next door may have a Warrington Road address for sure... but the house does not. I am not saying you are wrong, just that the general consensus was that he stayed in Sovereign Road.... but that means nothing I know.

I will check out your link.

The house with the fancy brickwork is deffinitely in Sovereign Road. The shop next door could have a Sovereign Rd or a Warrington Lane address. It is said he lived above a Tripe Shop So it looks like it's the shop he stayed above not the house.

In fairness, now I look again the house could actually be the living quarters for the store owners? How this would reflect in the address I don't know.

"Years earlier the house had been an ordinary dwelling-house, and when the Brookers had taken it they fitted it out as a tripe shop and lodging house . . .I never discovered how many bedrooms the house contained, but strange to say there was a bathroom, dating from before the Brookers' time. Downstairs there was the usual kitchen living-room with its huge open range burning night and day. It was lighted only by a skylight, for on one side of it was the shop and on the other the larder, which opened into some dark subterranean place where the tripe was stored" The Road to Wigan Pier p 3 - 4. I thought it was also the corner shop - but maybe not!

As far as I understand, The tripe shop that orwell lodged in was the corner shop on Warrington Lane/Sovereign Rd.
In '59/'60, I was living at the other end of Sovereign Rd, in the ground floor flat behind a hairdressers, which had previously been a knitting shop.The exact spot where I believe the Orwell Plaque is now