Wigan Album

That’s exactly what we could get in Wigan Ron without even needing to catch a bus.

The line of white doorsteps caught my eye & you are right Ron, in my Auntie Annie Foster's shop on Billinge Rd you could buy anything from a bundle of kindling to a rasher of bacon.

Queueing to get served at every shop... lugging an ever-heavier bag around.... One-stop, everything in the trolley, straight into the car boot... you can see why folk voted with their feet and purses for supermarkets...

Nice clear picture Ron, I think the roads are a bit busier these days.
Wasn't it Her Hitler that said that the English were a nation of shopkeepers? I would have said the English were very enterprising.

One of Napoleon’s remarks Colin.
“L’Angleterre est une nation de Boutiquiers..” translates as a nation of shopkeepers”
Hitler did make Napoleon’s great mistake by invading Russia though. As you probably know.

A great find Ron, a superb photo of what was then known by everyone locally as Robin, (Robbin Lane Ends.) It looks to be that the photo was taken on the corner of Harrison Street.
You're right too Ron as folks around only needed to go into town for specific items and would be going on Fridays anyway for the farmers market. As David says these shops began to close when folks began purposely travelling into town to shop at the newly opened cheaper supermarkets of Lennon's, Tesco or Whelan's, and even more so when Asda built a supermarket further down at Soho Street, on land where the jam and basket works once was.

Thanks Veronica, I new was one those foreigners!!!!

As you say Reverend
“ lugging an ever heavier bag around” I had to help doing that with my mother. But most mothers then were stay at home mothers and everything seemed to get done ie housework, cooking and shopping. It would be an impossibility these days for today’s generations with cars and jobs outside the home and inside the home to shop the way they did then. Plus they have all the electric gadgets to help as well to make life easier, but not the same time.

Veronica, I remember that the paper carriers with string handles wasn't comfortable bags to hold when weighty either, and would be cutting into the skin of your fingers by the time you'd finished following mother from shops to market stalls and home, and the disaster of a soggy torn bag if caught in a sudden rain shower.

On the photo Aldi has replaced the majority of the shops on the left, with only a few remaining at the bottom end, and nothing of what's on the right remains.

Especially when a big hole appeared in the soggy brown paper bag. I remember the net bags or string bags as they were called to Cyril.

Veronica and Cyril, I have some of those brown paper carrier bags with string handles, including one with an advert for a butcher's shop on it.

I seem to recall they cost an old ‘threepence’ Irene. They lasted a few weeks if nothing too heavy was put inside. You wouldn’t have seen them blowing in the wind and landing in trees either.

Cyril, no shops have been replaced by Aldi. Maybe six or so parking spaces on Aldi car park.

Noakes - that's a bit too nit-picking. Anything within the curtilage of Aldi's store is surely Aldi's.

Go and take Shep and Bob the dog for a walk, and take a look then!
You're being pedantic yet again, so no change there!
Whilst the houses and Chadwick's warehouse on Albert Street and also houses on Scot Lane were demolished for Aldi store, a good majority of those shops on Ormskirk Road were demolished for Aldi car park, from Brown's off licence at Scot Lane down to possibly where Murray's gents wear shop was. Aldi car park is from Scot Lane and goes down as far as France Street and Wood Street which is at the rear of the fire and ambulance stations, so a big area.

Rev David, anyone with any nous can work out who John Noakes is.. Rhymes with PLONKER,, He raises his ugly head using various nom de plumes..Thinks he is being clever... What a PRAT..

The opening of Asda in 1970 ruined all the small businesses in Robin, I lived opposite the Bird i’th Hand pub from 1960 to 1975 and saw it happen long before Aldi came along. At the time Asda was a marvel, everything you could want or need under one roof but now we pay the price, no local butchers shops, bakery’s, greengrocers (who sold fresh fish and jubblies too), toffee shop, newsagents (cigs and toffee) and betting shops (Jacky Peacocks and Bensons) Browns off-licence. Ironmongers where you could get a new grate for your coal fire, Athertons clothes shop (vests knickers panty girdle etc) Tom Hall bike shop, Mellings shoe shop, numerous pubs,I could go on and on, but we’re all to blame, we fell for the marvel of supermarkets and unless you live in a small town with planning restrictions you’re still paying the price.