Wigan Album

An online search for Hope School Wigan reveals only information for the school which is now on Kelvin Grove at Marus Bridge, I know it was previously on Scot Lane at Marsh Green and had been there for some years, was the building in the photo used by the same school previous to going to Scot Lane, and if so where was this building situated in Wigan and what happened to it, anyone know?

The tablet above the door reads "Hope School 1898" - so I would guess this was taken at its opening. I have a history of the church, written for its 150th anniversary in 1962. That states that the school was built at a cost of £3809, its foundation stone being laid on 12th June 1897, and was opened on 7th May 1898. It was built between the Hope Street chapel and Mesnes Street. The Minister then was CF Richardson.
The history relates that in February 1960 Wigan Council announced its intention to redevelop the area - meaning the demolition of the church's premises. Elsewhere it states that the former school - higher up Hope Street and opposite the fish market - was demolished in 1970. Someone else will know whether that's when the redevelopment of the town centre began.

Ooops should have gone to Specsavers I thought the stone said 1896<g> In the early 1960's it was the Youth Employment centre I remember going there when I was looking for a job when I left school that would be in 1963.
Rev you haven't got a photo of the Methodsit church in King Street. The one which was next to the Court Cinema?

Reading on in the history - in 1908 there were 34 involved in running the Sunday School - for 300 pupils. I count 45 people in this pic - perhaps the school had more pupils at the opening of its new building.
I thought the man in the centre might have been the Minister - as he's wearing a white tie - but the photograph in the history shows a much younger man, with a good head of hair. He was 25 when he was called to the church. He left in 1917 - and became an Anglican priest, serving for over 20 years.

Thanks David, I never connected the building with belonging to Hope Church on Hope Street, I was under the impression that it was the forerunner to the school that taught children with severe learning difficulties and profound and complex physical/medical needs with the same name.

Yes, around 1970 was the time the town planning lunatics took over and began to knock the stuffing and heart out of the town centre.

Item 1260 shows the Church , I vaguely remember it. Under Hope Street

For a time in the early 1970s I worked at Watkin's bakehouse on Mesnes Street and one day either in 1973/74 I took a big order of pies, cakes and other confectionery products along to a large hall upstairs of a building on the corner of Mesnes Street and Hope Street and I at the time just thought it was the church mission hall,

https://www.wiganworld.co.uk/album/photo.php?opt=5&id=1260&gallery=Hope+Street%2C+Wigan&page=1

on the link above it shows the photo which Veronica also refers to you, at the far side you can see the tall roof where this large hall I mentioned earlier was, the entrance being on Hope St with the long side facing Mesnes St, some may remember it as the Youth Careers offices were on the ground floor at one time, so maybe this could have once been the Hope church School.

That's how I remember it in 1961 Cyril, when I left school we had to go there looking for a job.