Photo-a-Day  (Friday, 17th May, 2024)

Glad to see a building being repurposed instead of going to a ruin like the Pagefield building. When finished lets hope it is in use for many years to come

Is the mill being turned into flats....or is it better that I should say apartments ?!

I wonder what my late Auntie and all the other people who worked there would make of this? The site of the forbidding mill chimney coming nearer and nearer as they hurried to work, frightened of being late and of having their wages docked, and having to "mee-maw" to each other to make themselves understood above the deafening looms. I believe it is being made into offices and apartments, and after its history of noise I hope it will be a quiet and peaceful home for the people who will live there.

Thanks for the picture, the area already looks much better than the last time I visited 40 years ago!
I understand the entire project will cost in the region of £200 million.

Do you think they will be interviewing for some old hands in the weaving shed Dennis? I doubt there’s anybody left - I could perhaps do a bit of ‘doffing’..if thats any use. This is very ‘nystagmus’ photo ..

Dennis is where you was standing to take this photo the starting point for the canal cruise boats?

I can remember when that chimney was a big un

"nystagmus", Veronica ! That's a rare diagnosis, but you got it right !

That chimney, which used to be a 'big un' and is now a 'little un' is a 'listed' chimney, and a couple of decades or so ago, the owners of the said 'chimney' asked the council if they could take the top five feet off the chimney for safety reasons, to which the council agreed, now whether it was bad communications with the 'taking top off chimney people' or slight of hand, or in this case slight of sledge hammer, after a few days of demolishing the chimney, somebody important from Wigan council, realised that they were demolishing the entire chimney, not the top five foot of it, to which the said 'official' ran screaming on to the site yelling "oi you can't doo that" to which the workmen said "oops, we've dropped a b*llock here" to which it was replied "No, yoove dropped a chimney"

Yes John, I was on the little bridge near number one Wigan Pier.

I can’t take credit though Alan I ‘pinched’ it from John Noakes.

Before anyone else misuses the term nystagmus as being related to nostalgia - it's from the Greek for drowsiness, and describes an involuntary oscillation of the eyes, especially common among miners (OED definition). I'm presuming Mr Noakes was being ironic - in response to my comment that Nostalgia is a disease.

James Galway..the lovely Irish man who played the flute suffered with Nystagmus.