Photo-a-Day  (Sunday, 18th June, 2023)

I remember sitting in the commercial pub a few times waiting for my husband have a crop in the moot hall barbers,

Good comparison photo Dennis. Which would we choose ?

A Greener Future? Protecting Our Heritage? Just meaningless slogans - Chorley Bus Station had, a few years ago, "Lancashire, "Where Everybody Matters."
All of it amounts to verbal opium.
The lower photo is alive, even though wages were low and health for many less than good.
Thanks Dennis.

Just look at that bottom photo, full of life, and our own Wigan Corporation Buses based here in Wigan, Shops that cared for customers. I loved and spent many happy times there in my old Wigan, not only shopping but nights out too, a great place to be. Thank you Dennis

I wish it was still the same as the old photo. Last week I stood watching a workman high up at the end of the building on the left it looked as if he was starting to pull the wall down…..thankfully he wasn’t.

Oh, lovely Commercial Yard. My husband Peter worked down there in 1968 as a young lad, (you can't see the shop on the photo, but it was a butchers called Sawbridge's), and was on the right hand side. They had moved there from the original shop in Wallgate which I think Maureen remembers......am I right, Maureen? I was his young girlfriend, (yes, I WAS 15 once!!). He still delivered meat to the close-knit community of Wallgate on a butcher's bike with a basket on the front until he passed his driving test and was promoted to the dizzy heights of Wigan Lane! He used to pick me up from school in the butcher's van on Wednesdays, which was his half-day. I can also recall Latimer's Grocers shop at the bottom where my Mam bought yeast, (which she always called "barm"), to make bread. We have lost so much character in the name of progress. Thankyou Dennis, for giving us just another glimpse and for letting me indulge in a few memories.

Great comparison photo, Dennis. 1 person now and at least 14 back then. Not really comparable, I know, but worth thinking about.

Spectacular, we had enough shops for everyone in the bottom photo.
No comment to the top photo.

Easily the most mindless slogan ever to appear on a fence . Don't they understand what words mean ? .
This one's straight out of Orwell's ' Ministry of Truth ' , in '1984 ' .

Closing down of Wigans old market hall

https://youtu.be/GLgwwYvv42U

That bottom picture will never come back, but thanks for the great memories Dennis.

Top photo could be anywhere but the lower photo is definitely Wigan.

The Galleries spoiled Wigan, it never took off from the start and so this new build will be the same. Lovely memories in that bottom photo.

'Protecting our Heritage'????? You couldn't make it up.

i hope someone spray paints
(we’re not) above protecting our heritage so it says what it should say,as wigan council have wrecked wigan for years now

Every council from the fifties onwards have ruined the town. Nothing that’s been done can replace what was. It’s tragic…. Preservation would have been better.

The Boars Head bus waiting on the stand. The Standish service started further back in front of the entrance to the underground toilets. Like the very many contributors to this, how I would like to go back to the days of the bottom picture.

Its the Wigan public who have have ruined the town of Wigan.
My old auntie had a clothing stall in the old old market hall and she used to say nobody is buying now since Asda opened, it must be worse now because all the women who buy clothes are going to Primark or charity shops.

This is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, the happy highways where I went and never will again.

With apologies for once again repeating myself.

Very true Syd and we are all guilty.

Very true Syd and we are all guilty.

Not all the public I am one of many who hates ordering on the internet….I would rather go in a shop any day…there’s many, many more like myself. We have been forced into it. How many banks are left on the High Streets?. How many staff are on the tills in Supermarkets with queues of people determined not to use the self service??? All in the name of technology..

I agree with Syd and Pw on many levels but I also agree with Veronica. I recently wanted a tie-front cardigan and I DID look "online" for stockists, happily finding what I wanted in New Look. I got on the bus from Abram to Wigan and went into the New Look shop only to find they didn't have any. I then caught the Leigh bus and rode through to Leigh, bypassing my home in Abram, to the New Look shop in Bradshawgate, only to find they had none either. When I described the garment to the assistant she said I could only get it "online", even though the actual shops in Wigan and Leigh were open for business! Many of us prefer to go to a shop than send off for things but that option is slowly being taken away from us. I have a bus-pass, but people who don't would have spent money traipsing from town to town trying to locate the garment. As Veronica says, those of us who WANT to shop in stores are being forced "online".

Go into shops and you can see what your getting, on the Internet is at a chance you take.
Some people buy cars on the Internet, why.....you can't see what you are buying. Scratches, dents.......

Oops, should have said on my post - Bleachworks bus on the stand, not Boars Head bus. Always known locally as the Bleachworks - really name of the company was Bradford Dyers Association.

I thought it was all gifted to the people of Wigan.

How wrong I was.

I agree with you Veronica,we have been forced into it but nothing is ever said about the discrimination around that.

I'm in Hospital at the moment but it's done me good just to see the old Wigan..nothing like it for giving you comfort.

So the demolition has revealed that mock Tudor side of that building in Market Place, last seen circa 1972.

Sorry to hear you are in hospital Maureen, and hope you are well soon. I mentioned you earlier in my memories of Commercial Yard.

Hope you get better soon, Maureen x.

Maureen I hope you are soon well it’s not the best place to be in this heat we’re experiencing at the moment….

‘Verukas’ you’re always wrong because you’re not right int’yed.

Maureen, best wishes and hoping you can get some rest, though on the wards it can be noisier at night as it is during the day, also that you're soon well and off home to your dogs, they'll be all waggy tails and licks when they see you.

I was going to agree with all of the above photo comments, until I got thinking that we really have so much to thank all of those various elected council committee's throughout the years. How many folks in this country during times of peace have had the experience of seeing TWO town centres and TWO market halls demolished, rebuilt and demolished again in their lifetimes? Maybe we should contact the Guinness Book of Records to have an entry added in their book, but then the present council would have the cheek to go and proudly receive the award along with photographs for display in their assemblage of achievements.

Good before and after photo Dennis, I would sometimes buy what folks would call 'funny cigs' from the kiosk shop with the sun blind down, they would call them funny because they were foreign cigarettes which had an aroma with having been made with Turkish or other eastern tobacco as opposed to cigarettes with American Virginia tobacco, the little shop was popular and always busy, and stocked quite an array of different tobacco products, though I can't recall the name.

So glad to hear from you today Maureen,and so glad you are feeling a bit more comfortable. Hope you're back home soon love.x

Tory club in Commercial Yard was a splendid place.

'Wet subsidises dry' policy, meant you got a cracking good lunch at a bargain price. back in the Sixties, that is.