Wigan Album

I agree Ron..I would buy a copy of that any day..I wonder who the artist is.

I’ve seen this one on F/ B it’s great. I did comment on it. I mentioned the
‘ slop stone’ where empty bottles were kept and the dustbin near the lavvy. It’s a brilliant painting it’s got everything in it that you can remember from the fifties. It could have been anybody’s back kitchen.

This reminds me so much of my friends house in West Street,Ince about 1960.The old railway line was at the back,where the Glenbranter estate is now.

Did you know that Nostalgia is a disease?

Absolutely love that picture.

Maureen and Ron, the artist is Rob Rowland and you can buy his pictures online....I have some greetings cards which I bought from him, including the picture shown above....it's called "A Room With A View". They are size 7x5. I will get you both a photocopy of the scene next time I go to Wigan or Leigh. Might be next week but I won't forget. Would you like one too, Veronica? Ron, if you want to look at his paintings , just google www.robrowland.co.uk I contacted him by his email, which is rob@robrowland.co.uk to buy some cards and he let me just send a cheque for the greetings cards as I am useless with bank transfers etc!

Here is a link to his web site. Some brilliant paintings. I could look at them for hours
https://www.robrowland.co.uk/gallery.html

It's as near as dammit similar to our pantry..we had the railway at the back..a slopstone..a geyser and curtain under the sink..and thank you Irene...I'm going to have a look at his paintings now...they're so lifelike and the young boy could be my brother Michael.

Elizabeth, my Auntie lived in West Street in the 1960s, number 66, and I remember looking from her back garden and there was an old derelict building which the wind used to moan through very loudly.....it was really creepy! We had one of those gas-geyser water-heaters in our house in Ince AND a porcelain sink with a curtain on a wire under it, hiding the bucket and cleaning cloths, and I remember Oxydol washing powder too. If any of you look at Rob's paintings, there is one called "Memories are Made of This" which shows a young couple kissing in an alleyway by a railway, in the early 1960s, with a poster on the wall advertising the film "A Kind of Loving". It's haunting.

Nostalgia, not what it used to be..........

"Did you know that Nostalgia is a disease?"

Rev David Long, you're mistaking it for "Nystagmus".

Thanks Irene,will have a look.I can remember Oxydol too,and a sink like that when we lived on Manchester Road.Do you remember the old water tank near the railway as well?

Surely if there was no '' nostalgia'' there would be no memories of another time.
If its a disease, it a very harmless one. Its good to look foward & equally good to look back.

No, I don't recall the water tank, Elizabeth, though I have since seen photos of it. I didn't really know Belle Green Lane at the top. I remember Sally Foy's chippy and Cain's pie-shop at the bottom end, also Annie Capper's drapery shop and Boardman's toffee-shop and The Dairy. A friend of mine from HAGS lived in Reservoir Street and that's as far as I went really. When I visited my Auntie in West Street I walked up Careless Lane and past the caravan site and entered West Street from that end.

I hope you don't mind a little story here which the picture has brought back to mind.....when my son Jamie was born in 1976, the health visitors at the time advised that Wright's Coal Tar soap was best for babies' skin. It sounds harsh, "Coal Tar", but it is actually a nice soap. I used to bath Jamie in the kitchen sink rather than mess about with a plastic baby bath on a wooden stand, and we had a geyser like the one in the photo. I bought a HUGE block of the bright yellow soap that I found far too big to handle so I cut it in half and kept the half in an old margarine tub, and it went soft with daily use. One day my Mam turned up and she had treated us to two of Edwards's delicious barm cakes and some gorgeous boiled ham off-the-bone for our dinner. I put the kettle on and my Mam made the barm cakes and buttered them with the Wright's Coal Tar Soap out of the margarine tub.....we were literally foaming at the mouth! That tale, along with many others about the daft things she did, has gone down in history in our family.....she was a Star, my Mam, and I hope she has brought a smile to you all these years on.

That’s a comical tale Irene our mams were comical without knowing they were. She sounds a bit like Aunt Lizzie in the book ‘’When The
WorldWas Young”. I love the part where Aunt Lizzie was trapped under the sash window. Reminds me of when my mam held on to my legs to clean the bedroom windows. It’s a fantastic book of thirties Bolton.

Ron, its so good I thought it was a photograph with the train and the washing line a painting grafted on behind the window. Thanks.

Yes Irene,Mans are adorable aren't they..as long as I can remember everyone has called me 'Mo'..it was even my youngest sons first word...I finished up being her career and one day she said do you know I don't like the fact that everybody calls you Mo..I didn't have you christened Mo..I said "Mam I can't stop it now,even you call me Mo..she banged her fist on the table and said "Mo..I do not... I rest my case.
Irene,we've always loved a ghost story haven't we,well just thinking about being at my Mams it crossed my mind..someday I'll tell you what happened at my Mams.

Thanks Irene,yes,I remember all those shops you mentioned,they are all so clear in my mind,and the dairy.That's a funny story about the soap/ butter,it reminds me of my late Mum's friend cooking bacon in what she thought was cooled bacon fat,only for it to be cooled honey.

Thanks Ron for that site well worth a look

You would think she would have smelt the Wrights Coal Tar soap when she was buttering up the barms

Well she obviously didn't, and I assure you the story is true! The soap was much-let-down and softened by then due to being awash with water daily. I had hoped to give people a light-hearted laugh with the story; it seems I wasted my time. You just can't win sometimes.

I've heard that tale before, Irene, I remember it was by Harry. Pemberton in one of his comedy shows.

Irene It made me laugh. I love your stories. More please. I still chuckle at the idea of your Mam having a go at polishing the wooden panel in the museum of she'd known it it was there. My Mum would have joined her. Dad used to say "Don't stand still. She'll either scrub you, iron you or polish you".

John, I have absolutely no idea where Harry Pemberton got HIS story from, but that happened in our house in 1976, and whether you believe me or not is entirely up to you. I will never forget the taste of that soap as I bit into the barm cake.and I would stand up in court and stick up for myself if I had to. My Mam is no longer with us to back me up but my husband remembers it even though he was at work and I only told him when he came home. I worked in a labour club at the time and told the bar staff and many of my customers the story, so perhaps Harry Pemberton pinched it off ME! I feel insulted that you should call me a liar.....the story is absolutely true! If it has been repeated as a joke by a comedian, (and I remember Harry well)., then it has been overheard and then used to get a laugh. Please yourself if you choose to disbelieve me. My conscience is as clear as a bell....I was there when it happened. I could tell many similar tales about my Mam that would raise a smile but won't bother in future,

And further more, I saw Harry's act many times when I worked at Bickershaw Labour Club.....he was VERY popular and I am certainly not naive enough to repeat one of Harry's stories and pass it off as my own as I know MANY Wigan World readers would recognise it as being "pinched". I have no idea how it entered Harry's act and neither Harry or my Mam are here to explain. I assure everyone that it happened in my kitchen and I am furious at being made out to be a liar.

Nobody said your a liar Irene, I just said that I'd heard the same tale before.
Your probably right, Harry must have got it from you.

Thankyou John, and I'm sorry I flew off the handle but it felt like you were accusing me of pinching the story off Harry. The recommendation of Wright's Coal Tar Soap by health visitors in the late 1970s was common all over Wigan, and most young mums bathed their babies in the kitchen sink or a baby bath downstairs so maybe a similar thing happened to a family member or friend of Harrys'. I also once heard a tale when I worked in a pub in Platt Bridge, "supposedly" about one of the tap-room lads,, (I won't explain it), which I thought was hilarious and I told many people the tale, and then was later told it wasn't true but was an "urban" tale that had "done the rounds" for many years.....in my innocence I honestly thought it was true and felt an idiot when I found out it wasn't; people must have heard it before and thought me stupid! However, the soap tale IS true, every word. Harry was brilliant and had audiences crying with laughter without the need for the foul language thought to be "funny" today....I saw him many times at Bickershaw and in other Labour Clubs and Legions, but I honestly never heard him tell the tale about the soap or I would have confronted him about it, (not nastily, but just to find out where he had got it from), because it was MY story. Glad that's sorted, John, and sorry for "losing it" but I had to stick up for myself.

Irene would never make up a story like that. It’s easy to make a mistake like that. The soap was in a margarine tub for goodness sake. Why would her mam think otherwise. I remember ‘Fools and Horses’ when coffee was used instead of gravy! I have nearly done that myself.
I have read a few stories of Irene’s in ‘ Past Forward’. I couldn’t wait to read the next one after the first one. I agree I bet Harry Pemberton ‘plagiarised’ that incident and made it his own. It’s life mistakes happen and usually they are funnier when it’s real and not made up. Keep telling the stories Irene. No harm at all …

Nystagmus is a disease of the eye - not sure how it relates to Nostalgia... except that it was especially common amongst miners (OED)... for whom many feel a nostalgia.
My Sunday newspaper today has a review of a book entitled "Nostalgia: A History of a Dangerous Emotion" by Agnes Arnold-Foster. It was first described in the 17th century, and was 'one of the most studied medical conditions of the 19th century'. One symptom was disturbed sleep, whereas the Greek nystagmus comes from means drowsiness....

The view and the kitchen are almost the same as my late husband Richard's family home in Kendle Street Wigan nearly sixty years ago. If the train line had been straight across instead of at an angle it could have been the same house. It has stirred found memories for me. Thank you.

Yes I wondered about the eye affliction Reverend.. I think the title of the book..
”Nostalgia - A History of Dangerous Emotion” that could apply to the danger of ‘living’ in the past…But it’s still good to look back at treasured memories as long as we go forward with hope. I wouldn’t want to be like Miss Haversham all bitter and twisted.

I once read a quote by someone who said "Many people say you should never look back, and whilst I agree that it is only right and proper to look to the future, I feel that to refuse the backward glance would be to have lived for nothing....to have lived for no-one". I agree wholeheartedly.

YES,YES,YES!
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