Photo-a-Day  (Sunday, 5th February, 2023)

Very nice Mick surely Accrington brick that’s got to be Lidl in the background ?

No doubt about it Mick , they are nice houses .
I think many of those houses in Darlington street east were renovated by Jacksons , whose offices were in Kent street .
I’m not sure if the company still exists however . And I’m not sure what went wrong , but I feel confident that many properties in Wigan that have been demolished unnecessarily could quite easily have been upgraded to a similar standard had more developers like Jacksons had a similar modicum of foresight .

Junction of Walmsley Street and Darlington Street East.

Yes, they are very nice looking houses, very Lancashire & I agree with Ozy.

PS If the Rev Long looks at this....& have posted a message via Album ( re map of the Parish Church ) for help with military badges.

NORI brick I think John, made in Accrington. I was told the molds had the letter imprints the wrong way round should have said IRON bricks which they were. We have buildings over here in Nth Yorks using these bricks, they are indestructible.

I have to say a superb job was done there. Not sure if they are flats. Pity they can’t treat King St in the same way. Plus the older terraced houses around the corner where the buses cut through on Warrington Lane are good housing stock. A lot of good houses were condemned along with some that did need demolishing.

Very nice but perhaps slightly over grand ? Stan & Hilda would love the one with the entablature .

Nice houses but I would not like my front door opening onto the footpath . We have always had a front garden.

Nothings too grand Poet for old Scholes..I never forget my roots even though I got out as many more did of my generation.. it was easier then to get mortgages unlike the poor folk now working their backsides off and wanting to get on in life.

The ornate features on the frontages of the upper section of buildings give a clue to their original use - as shops. There's a pic in the Album (21234) showing the upper property when it was Leylands shoe shop - with the entrance being on the corner.

I wonder if they will have a garden in front of the apartments in the middle of Wigan. Who knows they might discover long forgotten graves ..

I have just looked at the photo, 21234 the building was grand even then Rev.David. I have to say I had forgotten the shop was there it’s soon come back to me though. Interesting that Artist Isherwood was born there in 1917. Perhaps a blue plaque should be put up.

The far end corner house was used by Entwistle & Joynt (before they moved to the Teachers Centre round the corner) and in the cellar was a pipe with water gushing out and down into a drain in the floor, apparently it was piped from a natural spring and had been tested by the then Makerfield Water Board, and it was clean and not foul water, Spring Street is to the right of the photo and is from where the spring was thought to originate, the house on this corner was Gordon Isherwood's Shoe Shop, original photo of Leyland's below. https://www.wiganworld.co.uk/album/photo.php?opt=5&id=21234&gallery=Darlington+Street&offset=0

You're right too Ozy, they did do a grand job in renovating these houses as they were in a sorry state before.

I’m fairly sure that the property in the middle , the one with the lower roof was Entwistle & Joynt’s in the early 80s , before they moved into the old school just around the corner above where Lidl now stands , remaining there for a number of years prior to relocating to their current premises across the road in the former railway goods yard .

You hadn't posted about Leyland's shoe shop when I sent my post in David, well there's nothing wrong in it being mentioned twice, just a pity it isn't still a cobbler's and also the other shops that were along Darlington St East too, especially the clock repairers, there's a need in Wigan for these professions.

Ozy you got me thinking about the whereabouts of Entwistle & Joynt so I've had a look at their website and it was the corner of Walmesley St and Darlington St East, though I've no idea where the photo they used on their website is located, but it isn't Darlington St East. https://www.toolstoreuk.co.uk/about-us

Your spot on about the Accrington brick and the Nori should have been Iron Walt,you being very similar age to me would also remember Kay’s shop just a couple of hundred yards further on than these buildings on the opposite side,I used to get my work boots there ex army hobnailed 30 bob a pair albet they don’t wear hobnailed boots in army today but maybe wrong.

I wasn’t contradicting you Cyril , it appears we both posted at the same time .
You’re probably right about Enty’s being in the end building an’ all .
I knew it was one of them but I thought it was the one in the middle .

The spot where Enty’s stands now was a pop place back in the 60s .
I applied for a job there when I first left school .
Was it Dickinsons or summat similar ?
They said they’d be in touch , but I haven’t heard owt from ‘em yet .

‘Appen it’s down to all these postal strikes we keep hearing about eh ?
I’ll gee it another wik .

Nice houses , but if you like gardening, and don't like traffic noise, not too good. I like front and back gardens, a nice drive for my car, and listening the birds.
I like privacy.

Entwistle and joint hardware shop was there some years ago, two shops together.
Well spotted RevDavid.

I’ve just had a look at the link you posted Cyril and I recognise Paul Entwistle (with the tash) in the group photo and also Graham Joynt (with the beard).
I understand Graham died quite young , back in the 80s , probably not many years after this photograph was taken actually . I believe he was a keen fisherman.

I’ve been served by both of them on numerous occasions when I was picking up stuff for Trevor Sutcliffe … that’s when they would serve me , as 75% of the time, we were on their stop list .
The photo of the premises that you can’t identify was taken in Astley Gate in Blackburn.

I've just realised that it is Brookhouse Street to the right of the photo with Spring Street being next one up.

Ozy, I was thinking if it was myself who had got the location wrong. Everyone who worked there seemed to have either a Magnum or a 'Giz'a job tash or even a D'artagnan beard, maybe it was part of the job description. I can't remember who was who as I only got involved there because they had a dead rat in the cellar with the only obvious entrance/exit being the pipe with the spring water, which we had tested at the labs with no indications that it was connected to a sewer, as I remember they hadn't had problems before or again with any rodents whilst there, or they didn't contact us if they did.

Was the row of shops on Astley Gate of any significance to them with showing a photo of it? I've only driven through Blackburn a couple of times, and before they built the rest of the M65, also in the early 1970s a couple of mates and I went one night to the Cavendish Club in Blackburn centre and it had burned down, so we had a drink in a pub across the road and the wrestler Adrian Street was behind the bar, he kept flicking his hair up like he did in the ring to get folks going, apparently he had bought the pub, it was quite a laugh in there with him strutting around putting on a show.

Yes it was Dickinsons The Bottlers, they did have the old goods yard for bottling beer, nothing like a few fat and juicy cockroaches for adding flavour, especially so peeled and in a curry, they're just like prawns. ;¬)

I've seen the link now Ozy, as in how in the 1990s Entwistle & Joynt purchased Little Sheffield Tools in Blackburn, I hadn't read through their webpage properly before.

Veronica, I had a friend who went to Laylands shop for a job,and they said yes, but you only need to start at 11:30am.They don't get up round here till dinner time!!!

Might be worthwhile putting that photo on the album Cyril … what do you reckon ?
I can’t find anything on there listed under Entwistle & Joynt , and someone may recognise the other members of the group .

I’ll leave it up to you anyway .

Ozy, I've contacted them for their permission for use on the Album. I'll let Ron know too if they contact admin.