Wigan Album

I missed this photo when looking this morning....I love this sort of photo of times gone by....no gaudy wedding outfits bought for the occasion, just your best clothes & polished shoes...lovely.

Helen of Troy. Neither was it a gaudy time, 1941. The world on the edge of a precipice.

It looks quite cold judging by the frost on the roofing in the distance. Plus the furry gloves. The pointed hat on the right is unusual, it reminds me of someone in The Wizard of Oz. ;0)

Are you sure this is St Paul's Goose Green? A few doubts....
St Paul's has a large, broad, single light window in its East end (and a tower at its West end). The pic shows a three-light window....
There are high iron railings to the left - indicating a boundary with a road running at right angles off the main road at the top. The estate around the church was built in the 1950s - and no road comes that close. (Why are the railings still there anyway - they should have been taken for building tanks...)
St Paul's Avenue, running in front of the church, was only extended to Poolstock presumably when the estate was built - yet there appears to be a bus passing by the church. (I think we can dismiss the idea of the family being able to hire a bus for their guests during wartime....)
I'm also a bit puzzled by the location for the photographs - there is a path in that situation at St Paul's - it leads to the graveyard which would be behind the photographer, but it seems strange to have chose that space for photographs, when there is a more attractive area at the West end, with the main entrance, tower and garden. Also, the photographer is snapping from the North - it's obviously a Winter's day, with very low light, and no shadows to speak of, but I think he would still have chosen to have what little light there was coming through the clouds to have been behind him....
I'm probably wrong... but I'm sure someone will tell me....

Rev, I was brought up in St Paul's Ave; I'm pretty sure that this pic was taken from what we lads called the old coach road, the path between the church and the graveyard. If I'm right, and I think I am, the bus is on Warrington road, and the big building to the right is what used to be a garage of some sort - it was derelict when I was a lad.

john, I think you're right about it being St Paul's, after all - I'd assumed the building behind was the church - but if you remember it as something different, then it obviously isn't. It looks more ecclesiastical than most garages I've seen, however - perhaps it had been a chapel at some time? It isn't named on Old Maps.
But I think you may be mistaken about it being the old coach road, which runs at an angle between the church and its graveyard - meeting Warrington Road beside the church gate. Looking at Google Earth, I see that St Paul's has a low brick wall running down the Avenue from Warrington Road. It has a stone cap on it - which looks as if it may have once had railings on top. It is also graded in a similar way to the grading you can see in the fence line. The braces for the railings are visible above the hedge, where you'd expect - on the inside. The wooden gate in the background looks churchy - and I wouldn't have thought the coach road had a gate on it anyway.
So I think the photographs were taken where I thought they should be - in the garden area in front of the West end of the church. They look as if they're of guests (and the bride and her brother, who's presumably giving her away), arriving before the ceremony.

Rev, looking at it again, you are right The pic was taken in the garden, no doubt about it.

On warrington rd was st margrets home for unmarried mothers