Photo-a-Day  (Monday, 26th April, 2021)

This street is just a shadow towards it used to be. Busy with shops and houses. The only thing that's alive now it the traffic.

The concrete jungle masked with blooms and shrubs

With having all them electronic gadgets buzzing and humming on the roof, its funny its not drove the residents daft and become drug addicts

Another smasher, Dennis.

Good photo those red bricked high rise flats are the best ones of all. It would have been so much better if all the tall flats had been built the same. No need to keep them painted over the years or to repair the lumps of concrete dropping off. They look far nicer and probably more sought after.

I wish there was one of those before-and-after photos on here. I know all the names around the old Scholes of yesteryear....Greenough Street, Scholefield Lane etc. but I didn't know the area itself very well back then can never "match" those street names with modern day photos! Oh, I've just spotted MacDonald's so I've "got it"!

Irene Greenough Street was a busy area but not quite as busy as Scholes. Greenough St came under St Mary's Parish. Scholes was St Patrick's parish ( for the Catholics anyway.) St Catharine's was the Cof E. for Scholes and it was St George's CoE for Greenough St.

Another stupid remark from mick.

Another nice fresh looking photo Dennis..Irene the building your looking at on the photo is Busy Bees nursery.But your right, Mc Donald's is on the next block on you right, just out of the picture. Nothing stays the same.But we all have good memories.x

that photo would have been taken outside 'Lewis's ice cream shop'

Can we not see your house from here Mick.

Thankyou Edna....I can see the Busy Bees nursery, but it was the sign nearer to the floor, just behind the car that is pulling out by the side of the blossoming tree, that threw me...I think it's a McDonald's advert. Veronica and Edna, if I were behind the white van shown further into the photo, and I turned right at the traffic light that you can just make out, would I then be in Scholes?

There seems to me to be a very large element of looking through rose tinted glasses by people brought up in Scholes at a certain period of time.
I was brought up in a terraced house in Whelley without a bathroom and with a toilet at the bottom of the yard. Yes, there was a strong sense of community which is all but non existent these days, but, no matter how caring and well meaning your neighbours were , there was little material help they could offer and kindness didn't put food on the table. The NHS didn't exist and medical help (if you could afford it, that is )was primitive compared to today, alongside there being no Social Security worth talking about, unless you fancied a spell in the workhouse. I came from a working class family and look back on a happy childhood but so many of the kids from the Whelley/Scholes area that I started junior school with certainly couldn't. They were sent to school smelly, unwashed, unfed and their hair crawling with nits day in and day out. For all the ills of our present day society, and there certainly are many issues we never dreamed we would have to live with, give me living in the present anytime.

Irene you are correct.
Derek B I was 2 years old when the NHS came into being. We never looked back from then on. Always had good home cooked meals on the table. Not all children went to school with heads crawling with nits either. You are generalising and neighbours were a better class of people in those days how I remember them. No we didn't have a lot of money for luxuries. I'm certainly not looking back with rose coloured spectacles either. The standard of living is better I will grant you that.

Just to be provocative. I know the pictures of grass and flowers are attractive but I do think they are in the wrong place.

What I mean is that I think that when the redevelopment of places like Scholes, and the area along Manchester Road past Birkett Bank etc, was undertaken it was a huge mistake to have very wide landscaped areas set back from the road. Yes many of the houses certainly needed to be demolished. I grew up in Scholes from 1952 to 1972. My parents house of Dalington Street still stands but it was well built from red brick. Many of my friends houses were literally crumbling to dust.
However the redevelopment should have respected the traditional urban formant with houses and shops close to the street. These could well have new terraced houses and semis with back gardens and indeed introduced squares with central play area in the side streets.
As I say its provocative but I actually prefer the urban look along Darlington St East to the more barren look of Scholes.
A higher retained populations close to the town centre might have led to people making more traditional shopping trips into the centre. As it is we had many relocated to outlying estates reying on cars,

Sorry Irene, I hadn't seen the McDonald advert, yes turn right at the lights and you're in Scholes, look to your left as your going round and you will see the stones carved out to read "Scholes village" which looks ridiculous, I think.It was put there when the Olympic torch was passing through Scholes for the 2012 Olympics.

Derek, I can see perfectly what you are saying and you are right about the conditions. We too had a toilet down the yard and no bath and I wouldn't like to return to that. I think what people miss is the friendliness and neighbourliness that seemed far more prominent in those days, and the respect for neighbours and for the police. Dads would have used bad language down the pit, (it used to be called "pit-talk"), but few Fathers and brothers would have used it in the home in front of their wives and children. Yes, there were always exceptions even back then, but people seemed to have more respect somehow. That is what people miss, not the lack of hot water or the outside loos...just a lack of respect. Lads used bad language when I was at school, but people would say, "Shurrup, there's a lady there". Now, they couldn't care less WHO is there...ladies, old people or children....and the girls are as bad as the lads. No-one cares now, and I have heard young Mums effing and blinding at little toddlers....it breaks my heart. My son is 44 , married and with two children, but I would still wallop him if I heard that language from him. I have no doubt he may swear when with his mates or at work, but he has been taught when it is not appropriate. Sadly, a lot of children are being brought up thinking it is "the norm". That is the difference between "then " and "now".

Sadly Irene you are so correct in what you've wrote with some people now having no respect for others and with mouths like sewers, a neighbour threw rubbish into our garden the other week; and when I threw it back and said don't throw your rubbish over here; she told me to F off, before he died her husband too would always be effing and blinding.

As it says in Luke 6:45, "For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks." So that tells of what these people are really full of.

Thanks Dennis for these colourful photos of Scholes in bloom.

Well said Irene, I agree wholeheartedly.

Veronica/Irene I appreciate your points of view and I didn't intend to generalise about the kids I joined junior school with - of course they didn't all come to school in the state I mentioned but quite a few did., probably because of parents ground down by the drudgery that was daily life for them. I was brought up in a terraced house together with my grandparents, my mother and father, my mother's unmarried brother and later a baby sister. One sink in a cramped pantry served all our personal hygiene needs and anything else that required access to water.
I acknowledge what both of you say about about respect and neighbourliness and thought I had expressed that when I mentioned all the social ills that blight our lives nowadays, however, I still believe that, on balance, there are still more good than bad people in our society.

Derek when you think about it the country had gone through 2 World Wars and the debt owing took years to pay. It's no wonder we were still living in those terraced houses with no hot water or bathrooms. We didn't have electricity until 1957 in our house. There was hardly any houses being built. When building started again - what did we get? Inadequate high rise flats and very few actual houses. I still think communities in those hard up days were far more close knit than today's.

Well said, Derek, Edna and Cyril. Yes, there ARE more good than bad people in our society....we just don't hear of them.....good news doesn't sell newspapers! We are lucky here on Wigan World to be in touch with other good people. We may not always see eye-to-eye but we are very much of the same calibre. I feel lucky to know you all. Goodnight everyone. xxx

I have spent many past years mostly talking in handbags on WW but sadly the bickering atmosphere turn me away from Communicate, it’s good to see the healthy banter of exchanged views on P-A-D, a small oasis of good conversation and people, still present.
I am a boomer baby and although the late 40’s and early 50’s were hard times, those times taught respect, especially for your fellow man.
My parents were poor but it’s a credit to them that my brother and I never went without food, clothing or a warm home to live in.
Neibours were the salt of the earth and never hesitated to help out when times were really hard.
Would I want to go back to those times, no but I didn’t catch any harm in that period of my young life.

Micks remarks are becoming more and more outlandish. He needs to take care, as such remarks could be read by those who reside in the flats and they may take them personally..

Quite right Lynne.