Wigan Album

Gee's school of dancing, just beyond the parked van, although I do not know if it still existed in 1974. I enjoyed dancing there in the fifties, where I, to a degree, learned how to dance.

free parking and no ruddy yellow lines those where the days,well before wmbc found its greatest cash cows

I would have been on the the top floor far left, working away at my sewing machine.

not much traffic then baker boy.

wish i had a pound for all the times i have walked along that wall on the railway right to the top of king st you did not realize the danger you put yourself in it was a fifty foot drop on to the railway lines lol

My Mum was a button hole maker there when she met my Dad during WW1. She went back there in order to pay my fees for me to go to the High School, then when the 1944 Education Act came into force, she used the money to pay for my piano lessons.

Who remembers the old cab shelter that used to be just on the left of the photo. I think it was removed in the 60s.

Albert refers to Gees School of Dancing. This became The Golden Clog, the first so called nightclub in Wigan in the mid to late sixties. It had a late booze licence but you had to buy a meal to get an alcoholic drink after normal pub closing time.

The cabbies shelter was nearer the L&Y station..

BTW, altho' it's B&W, single yellow lines can be clearly seen...Spent many a hour sat on the cab rank there opposite Middleton & Woods office

Gee's also became Las Vegas Club (very rough), Angels, Shapiro's, and probably some others I can't remember. Slightly off topic - I noticed that Pemps has been demolished.

When you take into consideration, the size of the building, to be the location of a sewing factory, Coops must have been a very flourishing business, with a good management structure.

I was working there when the war ended, at the time we were making American army uniforms, we had ENSA concerts in the canteen at lunch time.

Hi Ron - thanks for this photo - my mother's sister, Nellie Bithell, worked many years at "Coops" ... I don't believe we ever went there to see where she worked ... but it's a wonderful photo of times gone by ... thanks!

Maggie, was your Mum on the buttonhole machine in 1944, if so what was her name as I was on what was called the Barring machine at that time, that was a machine that barred off the end of the buttonhole and were next to the buttonhole machines.