Photo-a-Day  (Sunday, 30th April, 2023)

A nice outlook around there with the trees, not so the white vans which seem to be everywhere these days.

Wonder just how many cameras there are in Scholes?
Though they are needed especially around the OAP flats, and also the high rise flats where homeless folks would get in and doss down in corridors and stairwells, as well as young folks taking illegal drugs.

https://www.wigantoday.net/news/drug-syringes-faeces-and-urine-found-stairs-flats-1252116

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/gmp-make-four-arrests-after-26639884

I have stood where the photographer is standing many times in the dark around 11pm when I worked voluntarily at WLT and was waiting for my taxi. I honestly can't recall what the area looked like before the flats were built; it seems they have always been there and yet they wouldn't have been there when I was a child. When exactly were they built, please? Does anyone know?

I remember when they were first built older people complaining about young ones messing about in the stairwells and corridors it was awful for them. They seem a lot more secure nowadays and so they should be. I remember the one and only time I visited a couple on the very top floor - the view across to Haigh Hall was amazing then. They stayed long enough to save for a deposit on their first home…you could do that then.

I was watching the Wigan Casino documentary the other day , filmed on Station Road in the 1970s with the flats in the background . I must say they look far better today than they did back then .
Credit to you Mike , I imagine it took some effort to get the entire block into the photo.

I recall Douglas House going up in the late 50s, behind the stone railway bridge leading to Wigan Central. The subsequent flats went up around 1968 - not as substantial looking as Douglas House, but the example in this photo looks ok.
Agree with Poet, not easy to get the whole block in one frame.
I drove through this area in around 2003 for the first time in 30 years, wondering where I was and losing all sense of direction.

Irene, I don’t know exactly when they were built but they were there in summer 1966 but quite new. I would guess they were built no earlier than 1964.
High rises often have a bad press but they were far superior than the dwellings they replaced. In some parts of the country they replaced tenements where several families were sharing a common outside toilet and water pipe. Where things started to go wrong was when councils realised they could built 5 blocks for the price of 4 if they used cheaper materials. These have stood the test of time so they would have been properly built. At least it is one thing that Wigan council has got right in its town planning.

I believe if you're on the upper floors of that block that you can see the dockside cranes in Liverpool.

Thats not Scholes it's Crompton Street

Where the car is coming down the road is what was School Lane Scholes , which leads on to Crompton St.
( Not School St.) Crompton St. is out of the photo.
Owd Reekie the first block of high rise flats were at the bottom of Amy Lane earlier than these , near Scholes Bridge. These flats were built about 67/68. I remember a row of houses by the side of the Douglas where the cars are parked.
Where the car is coming down also a row of old houses and a Chapel on that side as well. A garage of some sort further on before the Chapel.

Thankyou, Owd Reekie. I lived in Ince in the 1960s and the bus to Wigan went past Rose Bridge, Clarington Brook and along Darlington Street East, then straight across to Darlington Street and up King Street, so I wouldn't have gone past the flats back then, so I wouldn't have seen them when they were first built.

WLT adress is 44 Crompton St, Wigan WN1 3SL and
across the road in the photo is Crompton House, Crompton Street, Wigan so we are looking across Crompton Street not Scholes. Ive parked my bike there lots of times

The flats maybe called Crompton House but that doesn’t mean they are on Crompton Street.
Where the car is was called School Lane. You can see Scholes crossings in the distance. Crompton St is where the bridge is or was in the past.

Mick's correct, Veronica, it says Crompton Street on the front of the theatre.

I still say where the car is it’s School Lane. The theatre is out of the picture George. I should know I was brought up in Scholes I walked many times along that road. Where the cars are parked if I am not mistaken comes out at the other side at the bottom of Scholes.

Crompton Street joins School Lane after Orchard Street. The car mentioned by Veronica looks to have it's front wheels in Crompton Street and it's rear wheels in School Lane but that's not the point.
The photograph is taken from Wigan Little Theatre, as the photographer does confirm, and it's focused directly at Crompton House in centre of shot, so it's looking across Crompton Street 'towards' Scholes.
That's how I see it anyway.

Like all jerry built flats they have had their problems with bad build. Leaking windows water getting through the brick/cement cracks and the black and mouldy exterior with the rendering a few years ago. I imagine most tenants have beautiful flats but could be soulless places were you may see your neighbours on the same floor but never see any one else except in the lift that's when they are working otherwise you could be trapped in your flat if you cannot use the stairs.

As long as I can remember crossing the bridge from the town centre is Scholes. Whether it’s Crompton St or not which seems daft to me when most of it is over the bridge.. but thank you John - King Solomon couldn’t have sorted that better.. Even he didn’t have the advantage of Google Maps. At least ‘my’ car is 3/4 of it in so called School St. if you say so.
Plus not forgetting the other Scholes Bridge which separates to Millgate in Scholes as well. But that’s by the by I suppose.

Theres only 1 Scholes Bridge Veronica, its the one at the end of Millgate

Or the one at the end of Scholes…. Two ways of looking at it.

No Veronica it's the one at the end of Millgate at the start of Scholes

Don’t be daft! …