Wigan Album

My maternal great great grandparents lived here in the 1880’s. They had 15 children but only 6 survived to adulthood, The majority died aged just after their first birthday.

Now this photo is what this site is all about! Brilliant photo of an almost forgotten place. I remember Valmar Fabrics well and bought the material for curtains there when I got married. That alleyway looks almost Victorian, as I suppose it was, really. Very atmospheric.
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Yes, can remember it like this.Loved going into Valmar Fabrics.

I must have made a new ‘shift’ dress nearly every week with material from Valmar Fabrics in the sixties they were so easy to make! . Always bought 2 and a half yards of 36 inch wide material. If I didn’t find what I wanted it was on to Harts in Market St.
The knitting came a few years later when I had the children with wool from Crawford’s.
Inside Valmar the floors were very uneven and the rickety stairs were steep and narrow. I wonder if it’s the same inside!

Great picture, but where exactly was it.

Did Valmar Fabrics later become Flax Mill fabric shop, or am I in the wrong place? Just off Wallgate roughly opposite the Post Office? I ask as I once went for a job there but didn't get it and didn't like the man who interviewed me. I do remember seeing Valmar Fabrics and also Crawford's Wool Shop but over the years the mind play tricks with the locations.

I’m not quite sure what it became Irene but it did carry on selling materials. You are in the right place though. The building is still there John. As Irene says the opening is on the opposite side of the PostOffice. A the end of the row of buildings Wallpaper Supplies was situated. You are right memory does play tricks, there were so many nooks and crannies in the town centre that gave so much character to Wigan. You could spend hours walking about and finding all these stores. Doesn’t it look clean and tidy?

Correct Irene

Yes Flax Mill, many a pattern and yards bought from there.

The Meeks building is now an NHS centre for diabetic retinopathy eye testing, so a familiar location for many Wiganers in its new guise.