Wigan Album

Would anyone know the name of the street at the top of this photo?

It's the Wiend Ashley, it goes right round to Millgate

Thanks for that Jimmy.

I ahve spent hours in the Wiend, in the second-hand bookshop that used to be there. I would go in, and only come out when I was hungry! Usually weighed down with 20 or so books. It was a bibliophile's paradise! Even the smell was fantastic... it was literally a warren of books.

I think the bookshop was owned by a Mr Gubbins, who had a brother who worked on the railway, and as for Alf Tickles shop, he supplied me with a lot of musical movements which I used to power the sails in model windmills I made as a hobby in the 60s, he said he had to send for them to a place in london, but he never let me down, with no matter what I asked him to get, the shop was never the same after it went to Mesnes Street.

Loved that bookshop too, Dennis, but it needed to be tidier. I love atmospheric places like that, but I think he had too much stuff for the space and was a bit overpriced. Still, like you, I browsed for ages in there!

The book shop owner as 2 stall at bygone times his books are still over priced

Irene... I used to haggle! :D

I can remember finding a book 'Dune' by Frank Herbert in there, the back cover price was 99p, he had it pencilled up for £1.25.. it was only a tatty paperback, not a first edition. or anything special.. it was a second-hand paperback novel, so no way would I pay over the original cover price. So I offered him 75p, he was happy to accept it.

Now... multiply that haggling by 30! :D Almost every book I bought from him I haggled.... he expected it.

The Building at the top of the Weind was owned by a chap called Ezra Sidebottom.......anybody know what his business was?

Ezra Sidebottom's was a printers Gerry.

thats a good name gerry ,i dont remember it he he.

Didn't Tommy Blackledge have his own fishing tackle shop on the wiend back in the seventies

Yes, Tommy Blackledge did have his fishing shop there,just where the "Weind Bar" is now. Remember owd Harry that worked for him too.

There used to be another little printers in the Wiend appropriatly called The Wiend Press. I went to printing college in Bolton with one of the lads from there, in the mid sixties I think his name was Frank Turner from close to dangerous corner

Does anybody remember the small old fashioned stationery shop in the Weind? think it was next door to the barber's, was there in the late 60s and 70s.