Wigan Album

That looks like a Chemist's shop with the weighing scales outside. It would probably have cost a penny to get weighed.

There is a tram in the background, which dates this photo as pre -1931, the year that Wigan Corporation transport l3x3went over to 100% bus operation.

My lovely lovely Wallgate.

I know Maureen, I would love one more day, in Scholes, and Wallgate.As the song goes "Just one more day" xx

Edna,you get a lovely warm feeling when you see where you spent your childhood don't you..I can name every shop and add a bit of info on every one of them as I was growing up in the fifties - sixties..lovely memories.

Isn't that Wigan Mick's grandad, in the centre of photo, riding his bike?

Another ‘wasteland’ ! No character at all now.

Edna and Maureen, you will probably remember Sawbridge's Butchers where my husband started work in the mid-1960s. He used to deliver meat on a bike all round Wallgate. The business moved from Wa;lgate to Commercial Yard in the middle of Wigan around 1968.

Irene,I would go every Saturday morning to Sawbridges for my Mams leg of lamb,I've never liked meat of any kind and my poor Mam kept trying every time she put it in front of me..I can still hear my Dad saying..Ann," you'll not be told will you."..Jim was the boss wasn't he? a very big man and Jim was lovely...I do remember that big table where he used to do all the chopping and the sound of the knife used to go through me.

I think the post office is on the left with the old pillar box near the the road and a more recent box behind it. The Queens Hotel further down with a portico over doorway.

Yes, Maureen, it was Jim Sawbridge, and there was also another man called Bill, as well as Peter who started work there in the 1960s when he left school. I was only 15 when I met him but that was when Sawbridge's had moved to Commercial Yard. Peter can still bone and trim meat....lads were taught a skill back then that stayed with them.

I should have said 'Bill' was lovely Irene.

think that the bottom left looks like near top pf miry lane wall gate
the property near the scales ,with the little wall looks like dr petrie surgery

Alan, you are correct,three strides and you're t the top of Miry Lane..and yes the Doctors surgery was although I don't remember there being two doors..the lamp post on the extreme right was a bus stop and I vividly remember standing there waiting for my bus with the children,..it was a bad time as there was an influenza epidemic starting and someone came to tell me that Dr Hall had been visiting all his patients with the flu..he finished his round and went home and died ..he had been working right 'til the very end.
There was also a Doctor there for a spell who would smoke cigarettes in his surgery which I wasn't pleased about,my youngest Son was Asthmatic and he struggled to even speak once we walked into his room...I have more stories re the Doctors surgery,but don't want to bore anyone.

When I lived in Herbert Street of Miry Lane, my mam took me to that Doctors in the fifties. I use to see a Doctor there whose name I think was Dr Portman.

When I was growing up in Wallgate in the 40s the shop on the left of the photo with the blind down was Youngs Temperance Bar. Next to it was the Post Office, then the doctors surgery. After that (not sure of the order) were a newsagents, a chipshop and Ashcrofts grocery store. To the left of Youngs (but not in the photo) were Malleys shoeshop, a butchers, Ogilvies sweet shop (previously Nelsons), the New Star Inn and Miry Lane.

Oh my lovely Wallgate and Miry Lane, best years of my life. It was a proper community then and friendly people. I was born in 1947 had 2 brothers , one older and one younger. Sadly both gone now but left me with
Good memories

Half way up on the left Bill Houghton had a shop in the seventies. He was always talking about the pools coupon.

Great picture