Wigan Album

Brilliant photo....this is what Wigan World is all about. xxx

I know the photo isn't such good quality but I would never part with it. It's the only one with old Higham St on it. I can make out the houses and who lived in them. Many's the time I roller skated down there. It's just a grassy mound these days.

I should have said this photo gives a new meaning to the term 'legless' especially when your leaning on somebody's car!

I think the car is a Hillman Minx. Ray.

I agree Irene, is this around the time we were in our " gang" Veronica? I like your style, borrowing somebody's car to lean on.

A bit later Edna, '66 in fact. It was after the Whit Monday walk..the one before the last one. I think.

Thank you Veronica for posting , the house in front of your photo was of corse Mick Doherty and his daughter Mary( the first private house in the parish to have a telephone) the corner house of Higham Street Thompsons then Miss Gerrity can't remember the third next Lucy Coates , lower down Mrs Wynn the ' the Knocker Up ' if she over slept
half the parish would miss work ! I can also see Kitty Gaskell's house . Hope you're well , Tom.

Hi Tom, yes you are right about Thompsons but next to them was old Joe Reddington.
Yes the Doherty's were on the corner - I don't know who the car belonged to. Miss Doherty was a teacher at St Mary's . Owd Mick used to play the fiddle every so often. Usually The Wearing of the Green! Further down was as you say Mrs Wynn the 'knocker up'. The Burley's and the Gannons on the same side along with the Perkins. On the opposite side was Rosaleen's Shop, the Lamberts, Edwards, and Lowes, others I can see in my mind's eye but the names escape me. I'm ok Tom I seem to have escaped the dreaded Covid. Hope you and the family are well.

Thank you Veronica , you quite correct the second house was Reddington the 3rd one was Miss Gerrity . It is seared in my mind it was the first place I saw a body when Kitty's sister Polly died they had the coffin in the front room their nephew John Carter lifted my up and took the veil from her face I was terrified, I think I would have been 5 or 6.

Veronica, my father originally came from Higham Street and the family still lived there well into the 1950s, no idea which house though. We would get dragged up to Scholes every year from Pemberton to see the family and to watch the whit walks, but there was that many folks standing and sitting on chairs which had been put out early on the pavements, that all my sister, brother and I saw from the back was those statues being carried and swaying this way and that and us kids half expecting (or wishing) them to fall off the pedestals. Of course father wasn't with us as he'd be in a local pub with the rest of the men, catching up as they called it.

We could of course hear the different bands playing as they marched past, so we would entertain ourselves by pretending to play the different instruments - all good fun really in trying to stave off the boredom of being stuck there with the view of folks backs.

I know what you mean Tom, in the Infants class we were taken across the road to view Fr Murray in his coffin. It was scary and all I have a memory of was his grey woolly socks! Cyril it was the most exciting day of the year on Whit Monday. I'm sure my dad would have known your family, especially if your dad was of the same age as him. Who can forget the skirrrl o' the pipes...!

Veronica, (Dolly), I have just asked Flight Lieutenant Kite, (Peter in his RAF Uniform!), if that car is a Minx and he thinks it is. We have one from 1959, as I think you know. Her name is Dorothy and she actually smells like it's 1959! I don't men, she smells musty....just of "age". And there are no seat-belts! Cyril. I lived in Ince but can remember Walking Days like they were yesterday, and yes, the little lads in the "Lifeboys" section mimicked the Brass Band as they marched along , playing imaginary trombones. Once they realised they had an appreciative audience on the pavement they obligingly crossed their eyes and adopted a comical walk to accompany the "trombone-playing"!

Irene I haven't even got a clue who's car it is. I can't see it belonging to Miss Doherty the school teacher or her father owd Mick. It was a time when hardly anybody owned a car of that generation. Anyway I pretended it was mine for the photo! ;o))

You look like you're just about to get in and drive off to Southport for the day, Veronica! People ask why we call our car "Dorothy", and I always say, "Well, she's from 1959 so she was never going to be a "Kylie"!" My daughter made a cushion for the back seat in blue-and-white gingham material, as that was what Dorothy's dress was made of in The Wizard of Oz, and she appliqued a pair of "ruby slippers" on it.

It would be another 20 years before I learned to drive from that photo Irene, then I gave up when I retired 12 years ago.

One of the girls in the photo looks like Sandra Sutton, am I right?

No Henry I am with a girl who lived around the corner from me called Anne , she is a few years younger than me. To be fair it's not a very clear photo.

I think the car belonged to the priest that came to Dohertys Veronica?,think his name was O Rierly ???

That's sounds about right Theresa. He must have come for the Whit Walks. It is Whit Monday when the photo was taken. I have another one outside your house but it very dark. Its Anne and me and either you or Carol in the middle.

Veronica: O Father, O Father, I’ve come to confess, I lent on your car door for my photo in this new dress,
I did a pose wear my bum did a swing, and now there’s a hole wear the door used to be, just a little one the shape of my left cheek.

I will say four Hail Marys,

And four Our Fathers.
I wish I was still as slim as I was JohnG ;0))

Veronica: From my early teens onwards I always had a six pack, I used to run from Ashton to Billinge every night, and then from St Helen’s to Billinge when I started courting my Wife. Now I get a box of eighteen every week, + the occasional Dram.
I feel a lot better and more contented.

Good one, John G! And you ARE slim, Veronica!

Did her father ever catch you John G?

DTease: I was always polite to my future father in law, we had a silent understanding, I tried not to get in his way, and in return he always talked loud or whistled coming down the drive.

use to mate with norman thompson.last time i saw him was in the mid 1990s he had just lost his wife to cancer i believe