Photo-a-Day  (Tuesday, 24th September, 2024)

Coming back to life with junkfood outlets, barbers, night clubs and so on. Quality shops all gone.
Wigan will never be the same again.

I don't think King Street or anywhere else in Wigan will be the same again, not like the glorious 1960s. It was fantastic shopping on Saturdays, great shops and people.

What a silly road on king st, if a delivery vans uploads, traffic stops, who ever designed a zig zag road from the Council should be demoted.

I agree Dennis it does look better down the street even if it is more isolated than ever these days.

I agree with Veronica and Dennis that the look of the street has improved, but I also agree with Arthur about the junk food outlets, night clubs etc. I love a MacDonald's and I enjoy a drink, (or twelve!), but I wouldn't like to venture down King Street on a weekend night! Still, I suppose that's an "age" thing. Whenever I go along there on the bus, I think of the kids queuing up to go in The County or The Court Cinema in the 1960s. Apart from Lennon's and Tesco's Supermarkets being down there, and the toffee shop adjoining The Court Cinema, I honestly can't recall what shops were there in the sixties. I think my friends and I just stuck to the town centre back then to look round the shops on a Saturday afternoon.

The shops may have gone forever and those buildings which are occupied are more geared to night life.
Your picture Dennis does show King Street in a better light, most buildings look to have been cleaned up and the road is litter less.
I think that the amount of money required to refurbish The Royal Court has been grossly underestimated so sadly doubt that will ever happen.

Good to see the gentleman using the cig stump bin and avoiding a huge fixed penalty notice.

Does the building on the right say Platt or Platinum as the solicitors Frank Platt & Fishwick were about this area of King St.?

No place is ever going to be the same again especially these numpties who are running this country i cant even see them supposed to be levelling up towns!

Colin that what I said at the beginning The refurb has now been going on and off for a few years. I have heard all the excuses as to why the work has stopped from DRY ROT to WAITING FOR THE PLASTER TO DRY.. The truth is the guy who supposedly owns it?? Or does he? Has run out of money and the council aren't going to bale him out... SO in a few years it will be back to square one.. I've been involved with the 'KING STREET PROJECT' from its inception, and I said then. The plans they envisaged would NEVER happen.

I loved King St in the 70s when I used to walk my little one to school every day..the cafe at the top where it was said was the first place to have glass cups and saucers,then Tescos when Maureen was the managaress..then next door was Westheads sweet shop,who at the time was run by Frank Hilton..of course The Court cinema,where I’ve already told the story of the ghostly doorman,the cashier was eventually a patient of ours at Whelley Hospital…and when I was in the queue with my dad in my teens when my school friend said “I’m going to tell on you ..you’re with a lad who happened to be my dad..( I love telling that story)..I could bore everyone with tales of being in Tescos and the cafe at the top of the street but I’ll leave it there before someone shouts geroff.LOL.

King Street had several solicitors offices when I worked down there in the 70's.I also worked there in the 90's and it was still a decent street then,but went downhill later.Can remember the shop 'Maison Modes' from when I was growing up !

King of Clubs came to mind around 1967 good days.

Ron, I laughed when I first read that they has secured one million pounds for the work, that might just be enough to buy new seating or refurbish the existing.
After over 50 years working with top Theatre Consultants, Architects, Contractors and the End Users the last two major projects I worked on at The Stockton Globe and Aberdeen Music Hall started off with budgets of around £15 million by the time they were finished you could add at least another £10 million to each. Once English Heritage and The Theatres Trust get involved not to mention the inevitable unexpected problems uncovered once work commences you can expect delay upon delay and even more cost. Now both project are completed and look superb and are successful venues but it is unanimously agreed that it would have been much cheaper to have demolished and built new theatres.
From memory the seat spacing of The Royal Court particularly the Gods and the Circle are too small to accommodate modern seating and leg room and seating in the stalls needs to be removable or retractable to facilitate standing events, this would be the requirement of any theatre operator such as the Ambassador Theatre Group.
The best and most cost effective plan would be to demolish the building retaining the Victorian facade and build a new theatre behind fit for modern purposes. However in a Cultural Desert like Cloud Cuckoo Land Wigan, that is highly unlikely to happen.
Should you have the opportunity to get inside please let me know, I would love to take a look inside as would a friend of mine who used to be the projectionist there.

King of Clubs came to mind around 1967 good days.

The King of Clubs was a bit of a dive around that time but we sure had plenty good nights in there.

Nothing wrong with King st that umpteen million won't put right. Meanwhile drag me there and I'll pay..... to leave ASAP.

I heard that Andrew Loyd Webber offered the Court Theatre owner the seats from another theatre, that was being refurbished. But the owners turned the offer down saying they wouldn't fit ??? I think it was mentioned in the local paper at the time, about the offer?

"Coming back to life again"

In what way ?

The Revolution Bar on the left closed a couple of months ago, and has been left as it was on the night it closed.

The old Walkabout has reopened, the Pound Bar has been tarted up and is called something else now, but that is about it, the rest of King Street, which comprises of about 80% of the buildings in King Street are closed/derelict/deflunct, the place is a dump.

I stayed at Premiere Inn, Harrogate Street, for a few nights at the end of July as my husband was in hospital in Liverpool. It was 9.00pm on a Thursday night when I arrived and I was quite nervous walking down King Street, which was very different from the area I remembered. However, walking up the same street every morning to catch the train to Liverpool was completely different - a fairly quiet area during early morning. Good photograph Dennis, thank you.

Why a dump Sir Bob, if you are still a taxi driver then I understand you would travel along there a lot more and see more than I ever would, but looking on the photo and as Veronica and Irene also commented on, the pavements and road are clean and litter free, the buildings too look a lot cleaner and more colourful than what they once were.
The only negative being the shrub in the container looks to be overgrown as do the weeds growing on the roof of the building that is next up but two from the Court Theatre, and where the ground floor shops do look, as you rightly posted, closed and boarded up.

Maybe at weekends the place is totally different and absolute mayhem, full of discarded fast food wrappers and boxes and also the resulting pavement pizzas.

Gordon Ion, yes Platinum is on the right, with Platt & Fishwick more or less opposite on the left in the building with the columns and next door up from Revolution.