Photo-a-Day  (Wednesday, 24th May, 2017)

Looks neat and tidy, very good.

I've not seen them backs for nigh on 55 year.

It looks as if each house has 4 wheelie bins to contend with, is that so ?

Goodness knows what folk here would do if they had to have 4 !

Still as you say all looks neat & tidy.

Yes Ken it is very neat and tidy, just look at those bins everyone parked up in a straight line>
In some areas of Wigan you would get bins all over the place and some with big visual polluting numbers scrawled on them

You can bet the yards are a picture with pots and small gardens behind the gates. Also ,at least the bins are round the back and not in the front gardens!

Good photo , "Bin There"

Yes Helen, we do have four bins. One for rubbish. One for food and greenery, one for plastic and tin and one for paper and cardboard. All for recycling.

"The Backs".....the play area for Wigan children. They have, over the years, been prairies for Lancashire cowboys and houses or shops for little girls, needing little more than imagination. They were our playground and our way home. And outside toilets still to be seen, but I imagine the little buildings are used for storage now.

Fully agree with you Irene the 'backs' were our own world.....other children's yards too even though they were all alike!!!

Super play areas when we were young. Not all alike, some had chickens, some had rabbits and pigeons, some even had ferrets. When one of those ferrets escaped the whole neighbourhood would be hunting/enticing them back into their hutches. What excitement on those occasions.

"The Backs", memories of a childhood a lifetime ago, Yet seems like yesterday! Great photo Mick, Thanks for the post.

I advertised a terraced house for sale many years ago, that had a long defunct and dilapidated outside lavvy and ashpit, almost at the point of collapse, at the bottom of the backyard. In his sales blurb, the enterprising estate agent described the property as having " a well appointed garden with spacious brick store to the rear ". I've been wary of estate agents' descriptions ever since.

The "Good old days" when we all had the dubious pleasure of sitting on the "Throne" in the middle of an Arctic winter and the toilet paper consisted of pieces of yesterday's Daily Mirror hanging on a nail behind the door.

Presuming that these are the houses opposite the Dog & Partridge then to the right of the photo there was at one time a vast area of allotments, are any remaining or have they all been built on?

Ozy, is there any truth in the rumour that Wigan Council are thinking of issuing us with a large Recycling Bin for the recycling of old Recycling Bins?

You'll have to take a walk down memory lane Alan.

My Dad used to cut The News of the World up into squares for the toilet and I used to read all the gossip that wasn't suitable to my tender years!

Even the 'cartoons' verged on the very titillating in those cut-up squares of The News of the World!!! Towards the end just before demolition of our street I noticed 'mushrooms' growing on the outside wall of the 'lavvy' not as pretty as the picture above I must say!

I used to be terrified if I had to go to the outside loo in the night..to walk into a cobweb was my greatest fear when I was little...re the animals that were kept in the yards,we had rabbits,of course they kept breeding and my Dad would stand in the backs asking anybody that went by if they wanted any ..no was always the answer..I don't remember what happened to them..but there was quite a few.

All this recycling's just a load of old cobblers anyway. I've seen many a good pushbike chucked over the wall up at that place in Ince,...Frog Lane as well when that place was going,...bikes with thousands of miles still left in them, but the miserable bar stewards that work there won't let you take any of 'em. They'd sooner send them for crushing....for twenty pence worth of mild steel. And what was wrong with taking a Tizer bottle back for the threepence deposit?

I agree with Veronica on this one, I suspect people who shove bins in their front garden are just lazy.

Ozy, I financed many a visit to Wigan Baths by taking the empty bottles back, 3d for beer bottles and pop bottles and 1d for milk bottles. Luckily for me my dad was partial to a few bottles of India Pale Ale.

Very tidy backs, but this is Standish of course SO it's bound to be clean. Go anywhere else around Wigan and you'll find mattresses, prams, wheels, roof racks and bikes chucked out. People are so lazy to take it to a tip or contact a local scrap metal collector or council to take it away, so what happens they sling it out the back of their house.

Cyril - the allotments seem to have been built over a long while ago.
The fronts of these houses are as interesting as the backs - they were built for employees of Almond's Brewery, which was at the corner of School Lane and Preston Road, behind the photographer. Almond himself lived, for a time, at The Beeches, beyond the top end of the row, and the two semis below there had rear gardens as well as front gardens - so were presumably occupied by higher-grade staff. You would think that the houses would then be graded downwards in a hierarchical way - but they're not. They are all terraced - but some look as if they have three or even four bedrooms, whilst others are two-bedroomed - and they are interspersed - as if it was hoped that the lower orders would be influenced for the better by living next to the families of higher achieving workers.

I'll wager you won't find many Silver Cross prams chucked out Alb. Have you seen the price of them these days?..........fricknin. If you ever come across one, let me know. I'll make it worth your while. I'll buy you a pint in the Brown Cow in Billinge.

I think I agree with Ozymandias about things that are taken up to tips(recycling centers )I have seen our chaps quite rightly turn away stuff that could be more useful to a charity shop. The stuff people dump is appalling. What a waste.

When my dad was young, it cost 1 penny or a Jam Jar to go to the Pictures, and one of his mates paid with a Two Shilling piece. he was given 23 Jam Jars changed .!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

He should have insisted on receiving 7 Tizer bottles and 2 jam jars in change Brian, as any quantity of jam jars exceeding 10 is considered not to be legal tender.