Places   (Help with places, streets and buildings in Wigan.)

Doesn't anybody have memories of Lower Ince?

I lived there until I was 9 and can remember lots about Mount View and going to St Williams school but not enough about the general area to provide any interest.

I didn't know about the Bug and still haven't worked out where it was. I do remember going to the Regal with my mum on Friday nights, First House as it was called. My grandparents went to the Second House and every Saturday morning I had a mixed bag of sweets,left overs,or more likely,specially saved. I still love Fry's cream bar but it's not as good as it was then.

I remember the haunted house in Westwood Cemetery and walking to buy flowers from Mr Holmes in Westwood Park ( where you could walk through to the canal). We went to play in the pipes and other building materials when the cooling towers were being built - wouldn't get anywhere near a site like that now, but then it was adventure and fun. My friend from Mount View then was Eva Barrett who had a cousin Florence.

I learned to ride my bike riding round 'the cornfield', up the bit of Westwood Lane after the bridge and then round, in what seemed a big circle, past an area where there was an echo. I had forgotten about this echo until I visited the area about 20 years ago when my mother and I walked along the canal from Wigan and tried to find our way to Mount View. It was very overgrown and I went one way and she went the other which meant I shouted... and I was right back to being 7 and hearing my voice come back.

My mother used to talk about soldiers on the bridge during the war and how she felt a fool when they shouted in the dark,'Halt! Who goes there?' and she replied 'Friend'. I think she and her friend Phyllis Brown/Bowen had often been dancing the night away at the Emp!