Wigan Album

In October 1929 all the buildings in ‘Spite Row’ became vacant, and James Martland Ainscough seized the opportunity to purchase them on condition that the Standish Urban District Council would agree to their demolition. Mr Ainscough, a former pupil at Standish Grammar School and resident of Prospect House, was a prominent businessman in Wigan who became its 676th Mayor in 1923. Following the demolition of ‘Spite Row’, the site was cleared and grassed over, and surrounded by a low stone wall. The Council also took the opportunity to generally improve the Market Place including replacing the well-cover, and replacing the stocks in their original position near to the ancient village cross.
J. M. Ainscough died suddenly at his home in Parbold on 8 June 1937 aged 82 years; the Council installed a bronze plaque into the stone wall in the Market Place to recognize his generosity towards the improvement of his native village.

15 years ago I lived in Primrose Lane Standish. I am in the process of writing a novel (no title yet) which is set in Standish. I'm coming up 89 years old so whether it will ever get finished is just...fingers crossed!
Except from one character(Christine Williams) a good friend of mine all characters and events are fictitional, purely from my imagination. But here is a sample you might like to read:
Standish, surrounded by modern housing estates was a village still. A little world all on it’s own—a tiny piece of rock whirling around the universe. Spite Row, with it’s line of terraced houses, windows and doors facing inwards to the Market Place and away from St. Wilfred’s Church, built by St. Marie’s R. C. church to hide St Wilfreds from the eyes of good Catholics, is there no longer. But the old village cross, the well and the stocks are still there in Market Place.
So, on the High Street, is the house that was once a small police station near to the red brick Methodist Church. So too, the little streets and the terraced houses, the tiny warm corner shops with their smiles and gossip and the pubs with their roaring fires, their local brews, and their chatty barmen.
But, best of all—however many incomers take it into their heads to buy one of those cute little semi-detached houses that are springing up on estates all over Lancashire—the straight-talking village folk with their dour eeh-bah-gum faces, talking their own kind of English the
way scousers in Liverpool talk their own kind of English. Are still there. And always will be.

Best wishes
Marita