Wigan Album

What a great image. Took me a while to get my bearings but top right is the shops on Wallgate, near the NEW STAR INN, Then Wigan Pier just to the left. What a massive area of buildings the mill covered.

Unbeleivable how many houses are in this photo and today not one still stands?

Was Trencherfield Mill more over to the right?. Were they controlled by the same company as Eckersleys?.

My Dad, William Bradshaw started his weaving career in Eckersleys, he was not more than a boy, along with his older sister my Auntie Annie.

Yes in answer to the Trencherfield Mill Q it is off to the right and sadly out of sight .

Another great picture - thanks for uploading this.

Its amazing to see all those rows of terraced housing. The Miry Lane area was predomently residential back then. I am assuming all of those properties came down sometime between 1949 and the 1970s when the area became more of an industrial/business area that it is now.

Slum clearances making way for other uses on the land? I do wonder why the houses demolished we're not rebuilt on these same locations.

My old Dad was born down Miry Lane and my paternal Grandfather lived just off Miry Lane, and was shown in the 1911 Census with my Grandmother who I never knew. Together with their newly born son, an Uncle, who again I never met. My Great Grandmother then lived around that time, on Queen Street .

Pete,my late Mother in law Marion had the surname Barker in her family along with her Sister Nell,and they originally came from Miry Lane..you do wonder don't you?.

Pete,and I should have said that their maiden name was Shacklady.

My great Grandmother lived on Scot Lane in the late1860's. The family then lived near St Catherines church, Scholes, later, prior to 1900.

When the era of the cotton mills, the coal mines, the steel works and engineering works, plus other established work outlets came to finality, where was that vast workforce then absorbed into?.