Photo-a-Day  (Monday, 7th August, 2023)

Now this photo takes me back to a few months ago when I was attending a Salford University experimental physio programme for people who needed new knees.
It was being carried out in the Ince community centre, which is just across the road, the course didn't help me too much, but I did discover that the community centre had a very good cafe, run by some local women.
Looking at the photo I can't help but notice that someone as sawn off the clock from its post.

Ince Bar, well it's only a shadow towards what it used to be.
All the quality shops have long gone, but if you want hair-cut or like eating junk food your in the right place, because every other shop is one of those.
To describe the place in one word....scruffy.

I pass through there every working day by car, it's boring and there's no appeal to go there. In its hay-day Ince Bar had some very good shops with ironmongers, TV and electrical shops, all quality. Bike shops petrol stations and so on.
Today just a shell to its former glory days. Sorry to say this but most of the so called shops look like shacks from another world.

One of Wigan's rundown areas with no investment, sadly.
Lower Ince is the same, no character or real investment to transform the place. Hindley Market Street is getting as bad, most of the quality shops there are disappearing being replaced with junk food outlets and cheap quality item shops.
Ashton is one of the best.

Yes we shall always remember them. I remember Ince Bar being clean and tidy too with good quality shops for all needs.

The place needs funding or good business injection. Looks poor.
The shops in the photo don't look appealing to me.

I don't think Ince drivers understand that your not supposed to park on double yellow lines and on the pavement whilst visiting junk food shops, there is a free car park opposite KFC.

They gave us all their tomorrows so we could have all our todays….
Rest in Peace xx

This was a beautiful place that was known as Smithy Green, it had some lovely cottages.
KFC now stands there.

I attended Remembrance Services in Ince as a child, living, as I did, only yards away from location of the photo. I can remember the Boys' Brigade and members of the nearby British Legion marching up Ince Green Lane, past our house. The roofline of the shops across the road is just as it was in my childhood....only the shops have changed. The bus stop is where I used to catch the bus to Wigan on a Saturday, and where the little building behind it now stands, (KFC), there used to be a picturesque terraced row of little cottages whose address was "Smithy Green"; the Mobile Library used to park there every Tuesday. The photos of Ince you have shown these last few days , Dennis, were my playground, my childhood and my way home, and have brought back so many memories. Thankyou.

Well said Gary theres no other way of describing all that i can say to it is Scruffy its horrible.

Sadly, Smithy Green, like much of Wigan, as been sacrificed to the needs of the internal combustion engine.
The traffic along this road is almost unbearable at times.

Remembered forever.
Sad looking place these days, no backbone.

Instead of replacing the brass WW2 plaque on the tower at Christ Church with a modern black marble tablet, they would have been better creating a new memorial here with all the WW2 names on. As it happens, the old plaque from Christ Church now hangs on the wall of The Squirrel Inn, facing the memorial seen here.

The place looks tired.

I always did like Ince even though I never lived ther,it always seemed so homely..I went tio visit a nurse that I used to work with at Whelley Hospital,her name was Helen Sankey and her next door neighbour used to be a Sister at the Hospital ,I distinctly remember her cottage which was on the row facing the green having a very low ceiling..it was very cosy...she was a great person and nurse and one I wil never forget...and I think she would be upset to see the state that it's in today.

A distant relative of mine had a clog shop - he was a clogger - on Ince Bar. He was Albert Barlow if anyone remembers..

Yes, I just about remember Barlow's cloggers but I was only a very small child. It would probably have been the late 1950s and the shop would probably have been established for years, but I was only born in 1952, so probably just caught the last years of the shop as I can't recall it being there in the 1960s.

Loved my childhood in Ince,just so neglected now.Smithy Green was lovely,would probably would have had a conservation order on it if it was in Standish or Shevington.

Yes Elizabeth you are quite right it wouldn't have been neglected and run down if it was in Standish or Shevington.
And that would be because those places you mentioned have residents who care about the area they live in, they have set up litter picking groups and flower bed tidy uppers, so has to keep their villages spick and span.

I don't believe that is the sole reason Mick,Ince and Hindley have been long neglected by Wigan Council for many years unfortunately.

I only go through Ince on the bus occasionally and to me it’s only the garish signage that spoils the modern buildings and that’s happening everywhere especially if they are closed down. Those buildings on the right are quite good to look at. I don’t see any litter in that photo. The main roads are full of trees nothing like it used to be when it was a more built up area. As usual the heart and soul was ripped out of the community, just like Scholes. Most towns now are being neglected because street cleaning is one of the first things to disappear when money dries up in the coffers at the expense of the town centre which is certainly swallowing up the money in this case. Ince covers a larger area than any so called ‘twee villages’ around Wigan. It’s certain types of people who are to blame for dropping filth and litter on the ground not ordinary citizens.

Funnily enough, I can't see ANY litter on the above photo, only a well-cared for tub of flowers.
We have litter-pickers in Abram and I know there is a litter-picking group in Hindley. There is probably one in Ince too, but they can only do so much. There are caring and uncaring people in every village and in every community. Always have been, always will be.

Great photo Dennis, and what it is about - the Cenotaph being in remembrance of those who lived and died for their country.

Which other village (yes, it is a village) in Wigan and Districts has a swathe of green with cherry trees and flower tubs in the centre of the village within the shopping area? Also none of the shops have wooden boards full of graffiti nailed to the front as there are in a lot of other areas. The shops here are diverse and are also frequented often by folks living in the other areas of Wigan and Districts. As already stated there isn't a scrap of discarded litter to be seen, and quite a contrast to other areas which have discarded chip wrappers, pizza boxes and other profuse litter blowing along in the wind. I've no idea as to where those who are saying it looks scruffy i.e., untidy and dirty actually live, but I'd suggest you have a walk around wherever it is you live and take an honest look at your area, it won't really be very much different - then again it could very well look and be a lot worse,
and 'No, I don't live' in the area.

Standish and Shevington may well have gangs of folks who go around tending plants and litter picking, but the folks in these gangs are the exception - in not being SNOBS!