Wigan Album

Lovely photo. My Dad Bob Griffiths was in the 24th battalion in The Home Guard when he was a miner....I have his Certificate of Proficiency on my living room wall.

They all look very serious. I wonder if they had fun away from the camera. I notice there is a younger lad on the back row, he’s not wearing a striped scarf though. It seems very appropriate that the photo is taken at the bottom of the Park steps with the Boer War soldier in view. Dad’s Army made them more famous after the war!

Irene, my father too was a miner and in the job before the war, so with being in reserved work he was never called up, but he did do stints of fire watching from roofs in the town centre, he never mentioned anything about being in the Home Guard though.
Some of the tasks they and the Home Guard had to do would have been quite monotonous, but they got on with it.
Found this online so maybe folks volunteered or got recruited to do fire watching etc., and was not necessarily in the Home Guard:-
https://www.ww2civildefence.co.uk/fire-guard-history.html

Cafe covered in Ivy.

My dad was in the home guard and they used to boast "not a single German got into the standish lower gtound labour club"

Good for them Brian B. They did have a sense of humour then. Big smiley face from me ;~))

I'd imagine they'd need a good sense of humour Veronica, and got up to some capers too, wonder if the fellow with the stripes was a bank manager?
Brian, I was going to say that if you are on about the club up Giants Hall Road; then they'd have to be locals or in the know so as able to find that, but I then remembered that at the time the club would have been in the large corrugated iron building that was on Wigan Lower Road, so if there was a turn on along with singing and the chinking of glasses, then the Germans would know it to be the labour club and show their National Socialist Membership cards to gain entry.

Cracking photo with the original Boer War statue in the background.

Cyril, in the know is about right, my dad worked down Giants. Yes Veronica a good sense of humour was needed, like on the rare occasions we had pheasant for tea which had flown into my dads bike wheel on his way to the pit!!

First time I ever bought a pint at 16 in Giant's Hall Labour Club 1981 - Cooking Lager 42p a pint and my mate thought I was mad as Mild was only 37p a pint.

I hope the pheasant didn’t get pinched down in’ t pit. I remember my dad telling me a lot of theiving went on when he was in the Army. Having said that he came home on leave with woolly blankets wrapped round him under his great coat! That was in July! We still had them on the beds until the sixties…things were hard to get
‘ durwing the war ‘ as Uncle said in ‘ Only
Fools and Horses”…