Wigan Album
Standishgate
10 CommentsPhoto: Veronica B
Item #: 35015
I didn't work for Boots when it was on Standishgate but I remember when I was a little girl they used to sell books upstairs, (shades of Miss Lewis in Boots' Library, Veronica?!) and I still have some Milly-Molly-Mandy books that were bought for me from there. The price, 6/-, (six shillings), is still there written in pencil inside the front cover. Six shillings was a lot of money for a child's book back in the late 1950s so I imagine they were bought one at a time for my birthday or Christmas!
I'm taking a guess at Dunn's Outfitters Veronica, especially with those top leaded window lights and the faux Tudor panelling reflected in the near window, I was also trying to read the shop name also reflected in the same window, but I can't make it out.
Cyril, it's easy: it says Timepix. :-)
Only joking.
It says: WOOLWORTHS or, to be exact, part of the word.
The gents shop was Ellors ,it was on the corner of Makinson Arcade on the opposite corner was the same name but sold ladiesware.
Boots had an upmarket lending library upstairs
I can only assume that they later sold off the stock
There was a thick carpet
Donald, Boots' Library is mentioned in the film "Brief Encounter" with a "Miss Lewis" in charge of it. I actually have a Boot's Lending- Library book that I bought from a car-boot sale many years ago, because I worked at Boots for 16 years and just felt I should buy the book. When I opened it there were a number of four-leafed clovers inside that someone had collected and pressed many years ago; I left them in place and they are still there.
Thanks Ian and Tom, I see now that I'd read Veronica's title wrongly with me thinking it was one shop selling gents boots and clothes and not two different shops next to one another, if I could have read the reflected name I maybe would have realised my mistake, I'll put the blame on the glasses or the tablets. %¬)
Irene,boys of my age didn't watch pictures like Brief
Encounter though I confess to seeing Greer Garson in Mrs Miniver at the Scholes Pictures
I only saw it for the first time when I was in my thirties or forties, Donald, but I have always had a love of forties' clothes , hairstyles etc,. even though I was only born in 1952, (I sometimes think I must have been here before!), It's not something I would have watched even as a young girl but the gentleness of it appeals to me....it is like watching a vanished world. I have never seen Mrs. Miniver though I have heard of it and will watch out for it on the telly, as I know it is shown every so often. Your name is familiar to me but I can't think where I know it from!
Winston Churchill was a great fan of Mrs Miniver, especially in the war films.. I think it must have been the ‘upper middle class stoicism’ displayed as opposed to the Eastenders “we can take it!” When the bombs dropped. .
You would like the films of that time Irene. You can get them on ytube. Mrs Miniver and Laura in Brief Encounter rolled into one!;o)). I must admit like the films. They were actually produced during the war.