Market hall

Can anyone smell the market as you look at the pic?

Can smell this one...

No2 pic is certainly redolent.

I can smell bacon butties from the cafe,

One for Dostaf

Note how bustling this was....Compare it to the 'new' one.

A proper market Mac

Last day of trading...

Ah, mac,

I used to stand behind that counter at Smailes in 1961 as young lad, nervous as heck at serving but comfortable with a knife and cleaver at the cutting block.
The first pic with the revolving doors I believe is at the rear entrance from the cobbled market square, because of the doorway to the right where we used to get buckets of piping hot water to clean down the shop with and there was a kitchen above where you could cook and make tea, etc...

The smells were something you don't get today. The best smell for me was the one from the main market hall into the fruit and veg market...mostly celery but also the smell going into the small area at the back where the seafood was...cockles and shrimps, and yes again, the fresh fish market, outdoors, as you show in the other pic..

and eq, my aunt and uncle owned the cafe..my mother was always popping in for a cuppa...do you remember the sign on the back wall...BMADAITY, I think, when some asked what did it mean, someone would say Buy Me A Drink And I'll Tell You..!!!

Oh, happy days....

Hear hear, Fred. A sadly missed building.

Right on, mac,

You have really upset me now. REALLY upset me...LOL...

I feel like crying when I look at those pics. Not physically crying but inside, I am hurting. We have lost something that only our memories and these photos can bring back.

There must be hundreds of TRUE Wiganers that feel sad at the loss of our town centre, focal point. I realise times change and must change, but this market hall was so simple but so great.

sob, sob, must go and get myself a beer to cry in...thanks a bunch, mac, fantastic photos.....

I wonder who got the clock?

Or is it in the new shed?

Is it on the church dostaf?

I doubt it.

It must be somewhere, Bentlegs.

Somebody must have had their eye on it prior to demolition.

And their hands on it after.

Bet it's the wrong time now though....How much would it be worth, and why didn't the incompetents hang it in front ot the new sh.....building?

Worth a new thread.

WEP may take note.

Start one.....it will get RUWINED, of course, but hey.

Yeah, them pictures bring back some memories. I wish they'd left things as they were. Thanks for the memories.

Me?

After the persecution, humiliation and ruination I get for my Parish Church threads?

You're having a laugh.

Three mins twenty out now, since you ask.

Onlyme....the pics (And many more) are on the album section. Type in the text bar up there. 'Market hall. pics'.


I will post more later on here.

Check this article

Will definitely be having a look. Thanks.

I did join this site many years ago, but only very briefly. Loads more stuff on here I need to look at now I've discovered it again....get back to my roots..you know..

Cheers.

This view seems like a lifetime ago

Very welcome.

God Bless ya Mac......WONDERFUL....please keep going.....I seem to remember the hardware stall inside .....Grindleys I think they were called.....may pinch some for my album......

If It's allowed, feel free.....I suggest you ask Brian or Ron first though

Mac, that newspaper pic you posted..yeah, I remember most of that..like the old sewing factory. I was born in 1964. A couple of questions, if I may, since my memory's a bit hazy by now..

Didn't there used to be a motorbike shop a bit further down from the sewing factory?

And also, I'm sure there was a shop called Kays at the bottom of darlington street, across from the police/court building. It had loads of things hanging outside on pegs. But everybody I've asked doesn't remember it. It was in front of where the old gas 'tower' was, I think. Did I imagine that?

Does anybody know? Cheers.

Kays is a popular thread on here, Onlyme.....LOTS of people remember it..

I've taken a chance

Oh, great...a thread about kays. Cheers. I'll search for that and have a look. Nobody from my age group that I asked remembered it. I was starting to think I imagined it..rofl.

Cheers.

[img=http://www.wiganworld.co.uk/album/5/aikkxnhp.jpg[/img]

Was it the same clock?

Outside view?

Must have been. Looking for a more distant pic from inside.

pics only. easy viewage!

Will have to look at Mr Shryhane's fillum of the last days of the place.

Lovely bit of local history, but bloody hell, the music is maudlin.

Come along, post it with an explanatory comment about viewage with the sound down.

VHS

Expect 'How very sixties' comment/s

Mick's Old Wigan video

Mr Shryhane's vid is mentioned

What happened to the Bull's heads?

Mac I have emailed Brian and I will wait until his ok......

Me and a friend had a flat on Upper Dicconson St, we bought a kitchen table and 4 chairs out of the Market Hall and made 2 trips from the Market to the flat carrying the table and chairs... I think back and laugh, can't believe we did that, neither of us was taller than 5ft 2in and weighed no more than 7 stone and there we were carrying table and chairs through the street........Loved loved loved the Market Hall....

Lovely story Jouell........

Thanks Liz, it's true... forgot to say the flat was on the 3rd floor, so we had 2 flights of stairs to climb with them..things you do eh?

I also bought a 6ft Christmas tree from the market and dragged it along the street and up the 2 flights of stairs... After Christmas I opened the kitchen window and tossed it out to let is fall in the back yard...

Got permission from Brian to take copies of the pics

Have started a new album.....Wigan Market......

The ornate pillars holding the canopy outside the doorway my brother used them when he knocked 2 rooms into one and they made a lovely feature.

Macs pic at 17.17 the blurred blonde in the middle of the pic looks like me, ( as I was then )don't know if it is or not but.....

I'm stil using a teapot I bought in there at least 30 years ago..

If memory serves, that blurred blonde could be lookiing at one of those 'green lady' prints.

I'm sure there was one on display there for years.

Green lady

I remember those prints, but don't remember where I've seen them... If you are right, you have one heck of a memory dostaf...

I hadn't really noticed the pic properly, Jouell.

Then I realised it was Billy's pet stall. Billy is still in the new shed.

Or rather his mam's (or mam and dad's). You can't see the name above properly.

The stall was always busy on Saturday afternoons and while queuing, I looked at the fancy goods opposite.

I think there was a lot of brass-ware too. Companion sets and the like.

I remember those pictures, they also sold the infamous Crying Boy, the picture was later said to be cursed.



The Crying Boy - The Curse

I called at Bill's stall the other day dostaf, he and all the other tenants are getting really fed up with the way the council are treating them, shame really has he and a lot of others have had stalls in the market for donkeys years.

Must be all the more painful for those who hve really beeen part of the furniture for all that time, Ayrefield.

I once got it wrong about the pictures/prints in a discussion on here with Jo Anne.

I thought it was the Green Lady that was cursed.

But we'll say/type no more about that.

good thread Mac, plenty of old memories of better days for the traders and shoppers,

Spotted a Green Lady print and thought of this thread.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhQOzBRupaE

See 27:40 (Not linked, naughty words involved)

mac @ 17:17 I swear that looks like me with the red bag If it is I where having a bad hair day...

Jouell thinks it was her sue.

I think it was dustaf

In those shoes!

Are you having a laugh?

So you remember the shoes that are not on the photo

Aye! My shoes pinched.

That's why I was banned from the Market Hall.

Be getting accused of thread ruining AND resurrecting soon.

And anyroad, the shoes ARE pictured.

i No humillerated again

But not at 17:17

This might have been asked before. Is there anyone who remembers two stuffed either bull or buffalo heads over a butchers stall?

I like looking at the 'old' Wigan. Shame what's happened to the town over the years, the atmosphere is just not there anymore, but that's what happens when the cloning of towns takes place.

I agree Joseph,seen one shopping centre you've seen them all. You hear people say "we're off to the trafford centre" like they were going to visit the Pyramids or the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

Similar atmosphere recently

Good news about the clock.

I contacted WBC and this is the reply I received.

"I am pleased to inform you that the clock was restored and moved to the new Market Hall in 1988. It is situated in the first floor office suite overlooking the internal Market Hall."

Phil Edge
Retail Officer
Places: Economy, Waste and Infrastructure
Wigan Council
Markets,The Galleries,

I find that Trafford centre a real drag and boring.

Mache, tha not reet thee!

Cheers, Fred

the print of the green lady is very familiar......I think my mother in law had a copy.....don't know what happened to it.....