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

Yes, I think you're right.....Helena Rubinstein it was! When I was at Deb's, you could get SOME food, I think, but the mind plays tricks. I know you could get toast, and soup, but I'm not sure about a full meal. Yes, there were a few staircases.....some a bit mysterious.....but I can't think where they were. When I started on China in the basement, I went through a door in the corner, near lighting, and it was quite a treck up to the canteen, and I can recall going up with the money-bags through the store to the top floor, but coming back down via he back stairs. A few of us once sneaked behind the red velvet curtain that hid a further staircase on the top floor, next to the lift, and we went up on the roof! The canteen WAS a bit shabby, and was in two parts with the serving-bit in-between. The first part had tables and chairs and the other part, if I remember rightly, had a long table with benches or chairs along it, and Lynn used to go in there. I suppose those rooms and staircases must still be there.....it's Wilkinson's now, isn't it? I remember the clothes-floor, where Carmel worked, between the ground floor and the top. They still had a millinery dept. with hats in deep drawers, and the lady presiding over it always had rouged cheeks. To be honest, she got a bit "whiffy" before she retired. There was another lady on that floor who always reminded me of someone from the 1950s with her waved blonde hair and make-up, like when you see photos of Ruth Ellis, but she was very pleasant. They had been there from another time, when it was Pendlebury's, and we young girls must have seemed out of place to them. I would love to be able to go back in time to see it in the forties and fifties; I have a fascination for old shops and old ways of packaging before plastic carriers. You have probably seen in my various Wigan World comments that Peter and I go to 1940s events, and love everything about that time. I hope we don't get in trouble, taking over this thread, but no-one has complained as yet!