Wigan Album

Wouldn't you just love to buy some of those goodies for her.

Lovely picture Keith, I remember quite a few older women still dressing like this in the 1950's, even if the lady in the picture doesn't look that old. I wonder if she is wearing clogs.
Do you know the street or location and possible year?

My favourite photo of all Scholes. I always wonder if it’s my grandmother as I only have one photo of her when she was younger and I don’t remember her. Lovely colouring Keith. They look more like healthy human beings when you breathe life into them.

Yes, I have seen this before but the colourisation really does make a difference. I too always carry a wicker basket as bread, pies and cakes don't get squashed before they reach home. But I find it poignant too because the lady has a look of my grandma, although I have only seen photos of her. She wore a shawl, a brown checked one, and when I was born in 1952 either she or my Mam carried me in it. They wrapped it around their shoulders and held me snug in its folds...... I never had a pram! . My grandma died when I was 10 months old, so I never knew her, but I'm glad she knew ME, and I still have that precious shawl. (And, like the lady gazing in that shop window, I could just eat a pie and a barm!).

She looks rather wistful, as if she would like to buy treats for her family but knows she can't afford to.

My grandma died when I was two. I do remember being lifted up to the window it was snowing heavily and I remember the black cars. I know I was kept out of the front room because she was under the window in her coffin. The door was kept locked - then suddenly it was open and she had gone. Strange what remains in your mind.

Irene I too still use my wicker basket.

Thank you for those comments. Yes I think it’s Scholes. I remember being taken there as a 4 year old in 1945, by my grandmother, as she shopped. One memory stands out, she bought me a packet of crisps and I can still 'see’ the little blue packet that contained the salt that was found inside.

A study shows the earliest toddlers can remember things is two and half years old. But is has to be something talked about for weeks. Very good photo.

Keith, when I was about nine or ten, (1961-2), Benson's Crisps used to put a yellow voucher in the salt packet, (which wasn't a sealed packet, just a screw of blue paper), in random packets, and if you got one it entitled you to a whole tin, (they weren't in cardboard boxes back then), of crisps....twenty packets! My Dad brought me a packet from the pub and there was the magic yellow voucher! The tin of crisps was a blue tin with a Union Jack on all four sides....I can see it so plainly 60 years on.... and how I wish I could have kept it, but in those days the tins were returned to the manufacturer to be re-filled so my Dad had to take it back to the pub. But it was like all my birthdays had come at once!

Yes I can believe that
“ I think” I also remember more clearly 12 months after when my grandfather died. Not actually ‘dying’ but being taken downstairs on a stretcher and into an ambulance. That was the last time I saw him. I remember him better. Probably because he used to play with me. Another thing he would mention was ‘flying pigs’! That used to frighten me! Many years after I discovered that was something to do with the first WW
( probably) which he served in!
I can remember things better from the past than anything last week.!

Hello, "I think"....I have no recollection whatsoever of being carried round in the shawl as a baby by my Mam and Grandma and am sorry if I gave the impression that I did. It is just what I have been told. But I remember the shawl covering me on the couch in later years throughout childish illnesses, such as measles and chicken-pox, and am proud to still have it.

I also agree with others Keith, a bit of colour has brought it to life.

could she be thinking "If ony ah ad a few corrans, ah cud mek gradelier sconns thun them theer.

apologies for the attempt at writing uswi yoost fot speyk.
al aft ave lessuns off Sir Bob.

I remember those crisp tins Irene … and the blue twists of salt , but without the labelling that you describe .

As a kid , we’d occasionally go on evening coach trips to somewhere or other , which inevitably involved picking up a chap and his wife from Clock Face near St. Helens .

I do realise that mentioning St. Helens on a Wiggin site may be controversial…. But this bloke always got onto the coach clutching a square tin of Clock Face crisps , which he proceeded to sell to the captive occupants of the charabanc .

Clock Face crisps used to have a production facility in Clock Face evidently .
And speaking of taking the tins back … we were galaxies ahead of current recycling mentality even way back in the 50s weren’t we ?

Where , when and what precisely , caused it all go wrong I wonder , as films from that era , plus photos from Timepix show litter free streets .

I remember Clock Face crisps well, Ozy, which were made in St. Helens. And I remember the "Evening Tours", run by local coach operators, where we were taken for a jaunt around a local area, stopping at a pub where the adults had a drink and we children had pop and crisps. It was a much simpler time back then.

Back in the 70s we used to load Smiths crisps from a number of locations around the country but I think they all became part of Walkers .

I also remember loading out of a facility at Rishton Blackburn called Rishy that made potato crisps . Long gone now .

We also carried for Golden Wonder at Widnes before they also closed shop .

United Biscuits at Billingham was another crisp factory
that we regularly loaded from … The girls there used to throw half a dozen boxes on top of the load for the driver before sealing the trailer doors .

I remember an advertising campaign by
some manufacturer or other years ago , trumpeting the fact that they included a twist of salt wrapped in blue paper in their product .

Big deal ! … all the manufacturers did the same thing before they came out with all these fancy flavours .
Prawn cocktail … salt and vinegar … and bleed’n hedgehog flavour ,… just to mention a few .

Yes I too remember the crisp tin boxes by Bensons and Smiths with the little blue twist bags of salt. The boxes came in handy when empty for my odd and sods. I think they changed the boxes to cardboard later on.
Great days and memories. Thanks Irene, Ozy and Keith.

Great memories as a child/toddler, it puts them in good stead too, to be a very good person in Adulthood, in behaviour, personality and generosity.
Its a true fact, that children learn a great deal from their parents at a very young age, to be polite, generous, trueful and respectful. Their personality in later life proves that parents HAVE brought their children up in the best possible way and should be proud to what they've achieved.

Bensons crisps from Blackburn with the little twiss bag of salt...and square tin....Great.
Today they call them "salt n shake" without the tin. I think in the 1960s Smiths crisps had the same idea, but which was the first, I've no clue.
From memory, I think Bensons was the best.

Oz, I DO remember Rishy Crisps and almost mentioned them yesterday along with Clock Face Crisps.....they were both out around the same time.... but I didn't think anyone else would remember them! I remember being given a bag of Golden Wonder Crisps at a Sunday School Field Treat after Walking Day; I was only used to Benson's. You can still buy Golden Wonder. I remember when Cheese-and-Onion flavour were introduced, followed, as you say, by many other flavours, including the weird and wonderful!

Who remembers the machine outside sweet shops selling Beech Nut chewing gum? When you put your penny in you got a free packet when the arrow was pointing towards you.

Can you imagine chewing gum and cigarette machines outside shops today, they wouldn't last five minutes. Linma, yes I do remember them.

I remember the chewing gum machines Linma as we all did. I always thought Beech Nut was inferior towards Wrigley’s though. I still chewed it and got in trouble for ‘chewing ‘in class. You never saw those machines wrecked either to get money out of them. That would come later I bet and probably why they discontinued them.
Same when you could buy postage stamps from a machine.

I remember those Beech Nut machines too.
Like everyone else no doubt , we used to check which direction the arrow was pointing , then hang around waiting for some unsuspecting mug to turn the knob round to the sweet spot before sidling up on the blind side to drop the jackpot.

In the event that we’d just missed it , we’d go in the shop and buy a penny arrow instead .

Remember those ?

“Cake”!

Yes Ozy, we called it the Penny tray. Arrows, bubble gum, Spanish owt for a penny. Memories eh.

Yes, Veronica, and Linma and Ozy. I remember penny arrows and penny "Anglo" bubblies. Also penny "Dainty Bars", and halfpenny "chix"! And black jacks and fruit salad at four-a-penny off the penny tray! You thought you were a millionaire if you had a threepenny bit or a sixpence!

Irene you are so accurate and right. I remember all those toffees.

Garry, where was your local toffee shop as a child? Mine was the corner shop on the corner of Ince Green Lane and George Street in Higher Ince, and also the papershop on the corner of Ince Green Lane and Leaway.

You’re not wrong there Irene when you say a tanner in your pocket made you a millionaire .

I remember at infant school one of lads named Michael May gave me a sixpence piece . Don’t ask me why , as I still don’t have a clue to this day .

Of course , as soon as mi Mam saw it , she demanded to know where it had come from and when I told her she marched me off to go to Michael’s house .

Now Michael lived in a water board house a mile away , but halfway there we met Michael and his dad coming in the opposite direction trying to find out what had happened to his tanner .

I think Michael lives in Blackpool now . His picture is on schools, St. Andrew’s Garswood .
We were practising in the school percussion band .

Crikey , the stuff that gets lodged in the back of yer brain eh ?

By the way Garry , you missed out cinder toffee.

I remember YZ chewing gum out of a machine sold outside for a penny.The slogan was “Buy YZ chewing gum smashing you”ll agree,every fourth you get one more an extra packet free.”.There was a face of an owl on the machine hence YZ.Beech nut was tuppence.

Irene most corner shops had penny trays, mine was next to the Swan pub at Lower Ince. Long since gone, but have great memories of them.

Sorry Irene, I should have said the White Swan on Warrington Rd.

One reason why these chewy machines disappeared could possibly be that everyone was waiting for the arrow to point forwards and as a consequence , all the tightwads were waiting for someone else to put their penny in first .

Just seen “I think’s” comment. Ken Guy, aged 20, from Engineer Street, Ince, drowned in the English Channel on June 15th 1944, alongside 101 of his young comrades and 8 officers. Their compatriots in the three other frigates patrolling the Channel off the Lizard had been ordered to leave the area and sadly no one was rescued, although 3 managed to survive. He was a Radio Operator on the HMS Mourne, it was was sunk by a German U-boat’s acoustic torpedo. He was also the boyfriend of my mother’s younger sister and he visited her before he was involved in D-Day on June 6th. I was there when he visited her in Clarington Grove, dressed in his full naval uniform. I was born in the middle of December 1941. The memory even today is as clear in my mind as if I’d filmed it. I exclaimed to him, “Don’t go near the water, you’ll drown", I was at the most 2 years and 5 months old.

That’s a very sad story Keith. That would have been talked about as well and the sadness you would have picked up on. The unfortunate young sailor’s uniform would have stood out as well. That generation went through so much.
Thinking back to the ‘flying pig’ incident I think it was used as a warning not to go near the fire place because they would come down the chimney! It’s the fright that I remember.

When I was about ten years old I bought a bubble gum wrapped in paper from Nelsons toffee shop down Wallgate..I put it in my mouth..started to chew and it eventually went to nothing..I've never forgotten it..in fact I've been to counselling to try to come to term with it lol..Joking apart,I've never forgotten the disappointment of it.