Photo-a-Day  (Saturday, 28th November, 2009)

I have had a look at the website you mentioned Dave. In my experience sounds as if it may legally belong to WMC, ( I'm happy if I'm wrong )but has been handed over to a trust to look after & manage. In my neck of the woods, tourism, culture, arts etc are all somewhere along the line council projects even if managed by other groups.
I have to say the pics of Haigh Hall on The WLCT website bear no relevance to the pics posted on WW.
Seems they are into weddings. seminars etc already, the rooms shown are very grand. No mention of the history of Wigan being supported though....no preservation of miners or mill workers dwellings, yards or streets as you find in other places in the UK.

The council would rather spend our money on painting roads all sorts of colours and put speed bumps everywhere, its a disgrace.

It's just like the rest of our Heritage over the years.
Leave it long enough and it will fall down - then they won't need to spend any money on it.

When I was small, you were allowed into certain rooms in the hall. As you walked in through the frontdoor there was a room on your left where you could get a cup of tea and a snack, just cakes and sandwiches, and you could go into some of the upstairs rooms; some just had paintings and furniture but one had an enormous glass case with musical instruments in it.

I remember the interesting artefacts in the museum upstairs Irene, George Derbyshire a teacher at Pemberton Secondary school was a collector of militaria and his collection was loaned to the council to be displayed in there for people to see. It does look a lot tidier from when I looked around those rooms in the early nineties, then all the rooms were piled high with rubbish and the roof was leaking and it stunk with the dampness. The council once tried to flog it off to a hotel chain didn't they, until the public objected.

I have spent quite a few nights sleeping in there in the early 60s, the rooms to the right of the main entrance used to be living quarters for the live in caretaker Lawrence Wilson and his wife sadly he died a few years ago, but the place was in a decent state of repair then, when the couple moved because they had started a family, the position of live in caretaker finished and they just had a roving one, I think that was when it started to deteriorate

This room looks to me as though it is to be refurbished .The defective plaster has been cut back and removed. It is now ready for plastering, ext. As a rate payer I know the cost will fall on me , and on a few of you. The piper must be paid. Pity he's out of tune.

I worked for Jack Almond Joinery Manufactures at Higher Ince about 20yrs ago, we got the the job from Wigan Metro to splice most of the windows in the hall, went in all the rooms putting new oak window cills in and various repairs.The rooms were just the same then, its sad really to let get in that state.I enjoyed the job it was a pleasure to work on such a grand building.

Ah, those children in the nursery always did leave a real mess !!!!

Has anyone noticed the bars on rthe windows so the children cant fall out?

In the early seventies I worked for Wigan parks dept.On bad weather days we'd do various jobs inside the hall.When we explored down in the cellar we found a large metal door,somebody told us this was the entrance to a mine shaft.If this was true it would probably have been a drift mine and the hall had it's own coal supply.We also saw a very deep well shaft which we were told could be accessed from the rooms above via a trap door,so the hall had it's own water supply as well.I don't know when these date from ,anybody got any info?

My dad used to work inside the hall in the 80s. I can remember going there in summer holidays exploring the rooms. Great memories!