Wigan Album

Whoever started the fashion for demolishing Wigan & building all these square boxes must still be in charge. Still square boxes are easy, you have to have talent & brains to develop some architecture for the future.

Took me a while to get my bearings then spotted Park Hotel.

What remains of the Market Hotel is to be demolished this time round isn't it, and those shops in Mesnes Street and Market Street will be having a lean time again, if they survive that is.

Am I right in assuming that there's only three of the original and built as town centre pubs; that are now still open, Clarence Hotel, Raven Hotel and (The White Horse) now The Ukulele, or wrong?

Cyril. DOG AND PARTRIDGE, MINORCA or whatever it's called now

Cheers Ron, I'd forgotten about them.

Also Swan & Railway.

Dave I didn't include that as it isn't really in the "Town Centre" as is the ANVIL. i.e. ALL SAINTS TAVERN

The Swan & Railway had slipped my mind too Dave, and is another pub that kept the original fixtures and fittings or so I was told, I haven't been in and having a drink in the town centre pubs in about forty six years.

Ron, I didn't know the Anvil was still open, though I haven't been past there for some time. Strange how when the All Saints Tavern it was a pub where even angels feared to tread, and then after a revamp and a name change with guest ales, became a pub that was packed, if I was posting letters at the sorting office at night the yard at the rear was always bustling, it was a pub that my son and his friends would call in to drink because of the guest ales, that and the Tudor House, another pub I missed off the list, though that isn't really the town centre and neither is the Pear Tree lower down.

Quite a change from the one and only time I and a mate ventured in when it was the All Saints Tavern, there was a few folks in, but we didn't like the decor of blood spattered walls.

Cyril the TUDOR HOUSE is closed too

Cyril - you are right regarding the All Saints being a dive. We used to joke that it catered for all those that had been barred from the 'Brick', and The Crofters, just up the road.
I think the fact it was closed for a few years before reopening as a refurbished pub with a different name had something to do with the improvement. A lot of the old All Saints clientele had moved to other pubs, and those that tried going back weren't encouraged.

Ron, I would have thought it was closer to the Raven than the Uke?

First time I went into the All Saints a Guiness bottle flew past my head! Folk used to say that the ladies who frequented the place had prices per hour on the soles of their shoes?

Dave it is, but I don't think it would come under a "TOWN CENTRE" pub. In my thoughts the TOWN CENTRE was probably from King Street to Greenough St.
However all people have different views<g>

There is a video buried away on You Tube that was recorded in 1984 ahead of the start of the previous Wigan town centre re-development. In the video, a couple of senior people from the Council and a architect describe how the Galleries & new market project would revitalise the town for many decades to come. Just watching this video now makes me chuckle to think that all those golden dreams and aspirations would be lying in tatters less than 40 years later, thanks to the Council's own ineptitude, along with the greedy landlords and contractors who have driven businesses away from the town in recent years.

CJ the problem is the people who make these decisions have moved onto pastures new in another town, when the project comes to completion.. So the Councillors now, say "IT'S NOTHING TO DO WITH US..."

So very true that Ron, I worked for the council from the latter end of the 1970s to the mid 1990s and none of the senior management and most ordinary managers didn't live within the Borough, and a good majority of them actually disliked Wiganers, and when they made a right cock up of things they, as you say, either went elsewhere or retired and left it to others to sort it out, it would come as no surprise if it's still happening.

stop moaning start voting,THEM OUT