Wigan Album
Mesnes St
8 CommentsPhoto: Frank Orrell
Item #: 32418
On the left is the building acquired by Smiths for their new booksellers and newsagents.
I need to emphasise that all the pictures that I post, including these, are copyright of jpi media and thanks to Janet Wilson, editor of the Wigan Observer, for her permission to post them.
Another good one Frank. The Wesleyan School I used to go to, just as I remember it, Girls entrance to the right, Boys left. I could give you a tour of the inside of the building. The playground was half underneath the school & half open to the sky.
Great set of pics and thanks to Wigan Observer.
Am I right in thinking that the building acquired by Smiths bookshop was refurbished or rebuilt at some point between 1971 & the mid 1980s? The corner is now occupied by the British Heart Foundation shop. The windows, doorways & brickwork have been exactly the same since I was a kid in the 1980s.
Back Mesnes Street became Mesnes Terrace in 1971 after the demolition of a building that looked like a warehouse. Smiths bookshop opened on the site of Baillies bakery in 1972. With Mesnes Terrace now a thoroughfare for vehicles with car parks on both sides, it was used by buses when the one way system in town was introduced. Buses coming into town from Crompton Street to get to the bus station, mostly Lancashire United went right into Standishgate, left into Dicconson Street and Mesnes Terrace, left into Mesnes Street and right into Marsden Street. In 1984 the third multistorey car park was built here after those in Millgate and Station Road.
Not all Back Mesnes Street became Mesnes Terrace, Mr X. The alley behind the Mesnes Street shops, from Smiths bookshop up to Upper Dicconson Street was also Back Mesnes Street.
Where the bulldozer is used to be our house no 12 Dicconson st next door to the shoe shop windmill shoes I think it was called. where the tree is was no 22 an infamous lodging house.
Congratulations Frank. A great set of photos yet again, capturing for posterity that particular area of Wigan in the early 1970's.