Wigan Album

Now Platt & Fishwick solicitors

I remember the single file queues in there and also Wigan GPO. I was always in the wrong queue! It was many years after USA adopted the one queue that we followed suit.

I remember going in there one day in the 1970's when it was the TSB Bank, whilst I was waiting at the counter there was a lot of commotion behind me and a lot of the staff were out looking at white footprints on the carpet near the entrance. It was only when I went outside I found out that I had inadvertently stepped in an some white paint which was on the pavement outside of the Court Cinema It's a good job that after a few steps into the building the paint footprints had disappeared otherwise they would have traced them to me stood at the counter. It must have been gloss paint as I never could get it off the bottoms of my shoes.

Trust you, Ron! x.

I know these are only buildings but I feel sad at what they have to witness at weekends these days in King Street.

Worked there from 1968 to 1974, great set of girls to work and socialise with; Margaret Wall,Chris Knowles,Val Ashurst, Gwen Ryan, Sue Preston, Ann Murphy, Chris Carr, Sandra Walsh, Janice Houghton, ..the list goes on.The November Balance was an ordeal.. no computers then and balancing every account manually... we worked 8am till 9pm every day except Sunday, when we got an hour of a reprieve and worked till 8pm and the 1968 Balance lasted weeks !!Also remember wall to wall people queueing, especially Friday teatime. Some great laughs though.

Not sure I remember your name Elizabeth but I do remember the 1968 trial balance. I worked 40 hours overtime that year and the last section to be balanced was due to a spiders leg on the register. I remember one year when Nov 20th landed on a Saturday and on the morning it was chaos. Although we should have closed at mid-day we had to send the caretaker out at 1.45p.m. to stop others joining the throng. The bank set up a trial balance section after that which allowed me to spend a bit of time trainspotting from the back window.

See railings and compare with older picture of the Wigan Dispensary building, when it had become the Savings Bank, elsewhere on WiganWorld. It seems they repurposed the railings when they rebuilt the bank.

Part of the original railings are still in tact today.

Fine old building Ron, that’s when banks constructed imposing buildings to convey their status and wealth. Good to see that it has survived.

Thinking about it, the TSB now relocated from this Grand Building to a Kiosk in the Grand Arcade, how the mighty have fallen!