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The Growth Of Aughton Street
The Growth Of Aughton Street

The view towards the clock tower from the post office on Aughton Street
Aughton Street has provided the town with a vast range of businesses and shops over the years, the street accommodated the market, with stalls stretching as far down as Park Road and beyond. Large employers operated along the street, the Gas Company was based there from the mid 19th Century and built houses for its workers close by. The Post Office moved from the top of the street and settled into the new premises during the early 1900s. The Boys School occupied a prime position on the street for many years and it was also home to the town Library for a number of years.

Top East corner of Aughton Street, with Mawdsleys – The Original Gingerbread shop, The White Bull Inn and Muggy Lees
Small shops provided a vast range of goods and supplies, saddlers, grocers, poultry, dressmakers, tailors, china dealers, bakers, marine stores, furniture makers, watchmakers. Small enterprises which provided locally sourced and locally manufactured goods.
Around a dozen public houses enjoyed good and bad fortunes along both sides of the street, The Fleece, The White Bull, The Black Horse, The Queens on one side and the George & Dragon, Talbot, Black Bull, Forrester’s Arms, Bull’s Head, Star Beer House and Greyhound on the other side.

The top West corner of Aughton Street, c1865
Yet behind the thriving shops and businesses there were on both sides many small courtyards and alleyways where people lived. The use of the spaces behind street fronted buildings for dwellings increased massively during the mid 1800s when migrating agricultural workers came into the town, many of them Irish Immigrants.
Two amazing Great War Memorials are forever linked to Aughton Street, the Boys School Memorial, currently safe in a private collection, and the Memorial in the main Post Office.
To the west the buildings at the start of the street near the clock have remained the same for over 100 years, whereas across the road, the original Mawdesleys Gingerbread shop, the Fleece Inn and downwards there were rebuilds and new builds over many years.

A parade on Aughton Street 1 in 937
The street continued to attract national retailers, during a time when the town had everything a shopper needed.
Ormskirk Bygone Times has collected detailed history on the courts of Aughton Street and the families that lived in them, on the school and the businesses, visit our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/Ormskirkbygonetimes for more information.
The Brick Stiles Becomes Stanley Street
The Brick Stiles Becomes Stanley Street

Stanley Street 1910
During the mid 19th Century, Ormskirk saw rapid growth with new buildings of every size being erected for housing, business, social care, education and recreation. All this building required building materials and predominantly Brick. Like many towns Ormskirk was able to locally source bricks from its own Brick Field, situated conveniently close to the town in the area between Wigan Road and Derby Street.

The Windmill Pub on Wigan Road
Stanley Street was originally named The Brick Stiles and the brick fields were adjacent. The area of the field was set up with good drainage and the drying ground was opposite Mill Street. The Windmill Pub was at one time the Brick Makers home and is most likely built of local brick from across the road.
By the 1861 census the Brick Stiles had been renamed Stanley Street, honouring the local Stanley Family with connections to Cross Hall and also the Earls of Derby. There was just a Blacksmiths shop along the street at first but the development had begun. By 1871 numbers 1 – 9 had been built and housed police officers, school teachers and retired farmers,
Houses were built along the street to provide homes for purchase as opposed to tenancy and therefore they were larger than the older cottage style terraces found in other parts of the town and also had a more practical and modern layout. They also had the same bay windowed garden front which had been the style in the Victorian era to emulate the grander houses. By adding classic architectural features like elaborate stone around doorways and windows and decorative features on porches this gave an impression of status to the new owners.

An unknown girl with her bike on Stanley Street around WW1
By 1881, the street was complete and housed architects, manufacturers, teachers, auctioneers, insurance agents and many of the houses had live in servants. It was probably seen as a stepping stone towards the new houses on Knowsley Road and then even a future in Ruff Lane of the new developments in St Helens Road. Stanley Street was a purpose built model street and a very up and coming part of town in the 1880s and 90s.
Ormskirk Bygone Times has researched almost every resident of the street from the late 1800s with many interesting links to the town and the businesses in the town.
Visit our Facebook page where almost 6000 people are keeping tabs on the history and future of the town at <a href="https://www generic indian viagra.facebook.com/Ormskirkbygonetimes”>https://www.facebook.com/Ormskirkbygonetimes
With Love From Ormskirk
With Love From Ormskirk
As Valentines Day once more approaches, let’s look back at how the romantics of the town put a lot of effort into marking the day with their own true love.

An example of a Victorian Valentine card
In the 1830’s, 60,000 valentine cards were sent by the relatively expensive postal service in Great Britain. These cards were not as we find today, mass produced and put out on display for you to browse and select what suits. The cards sent in the 19th century were mainly homemade, elaborate postcards, decorated with silk and lace and ribbons.
People of Ormskirk would have been as skilled as anyone else at crafting a special card for their Valentine with coin spent on a little piece of ribbon or lace from the local milliners in the town, for those who could afford that. Many girls probably sacrificed trimmings from their Sunday Bonnets and possibly various other apparel, to decorate their cards.

The site of Ormskirk’s original post office on Aughton Street
We can only wonder at how so many thousands of cards were sent on Valentines Day at a time when many young people would only be able to make their mark ‘X ‘on their marriage lines! Symbolic tokens of love crafted onto a homemade card, along with it being the 14th February must have helped to deliver the message without words!
Young people met through the workplace, Church or Chapel or family occasions, Ormskirk was a town which adored its gatherings and festivities all year round, with Church Bazaars, Town Galas, theatrical and musical performances available at several theatres and venues in the town and many groups for young people to meet and fall in love. It wasn’t all about working a 6 day week with no time to relax, people in the 19th century didn’t travel miles to work, days were long but social events were very well supported, there was little to stay at home for! Entertainment brought people together outside of work.

Another example of a Victorian Valentine card
Once the cards were made and ready to post, the busiest place in the town on the 13th and 14th February in the 19th century would have been the post office, for most of those early years it was at the corner of Aughton Street and Church Street, offering delivery the same day for local post, the foot post from Southport arrived late in the day, by 5.30 if the post man made good time.
The marked difference between 19th Century homemade Valentines Cards and the more modern mass manufactured cards which we know of is the cost and possibly more so the personal touch. The only financial gain then was for the post office.
Ormskirk On Parade
Ormskirk On Parade

Gala Day in Ormskirk
The people of Ormskirk have always enjoyed a good parade. Traditional events like the Ormskirk Gala, the District Agricultural Show and the Empire Day parades were highlights in the town. Coupled with the various Coronations, Jubilees and various Anniversary parades, the town has some wonderful celebrations to look back on.
The town Gala was a huge event, spread across various venues in the town and over a couple of days, dressing up was popular and dressing up and riding a bike was even more popular with prizes for the most imaginative turnouts.
The Lancashire Hussars parade down Moor Street
The local Agricultural Show attracted exhibitors from all over the United Kingdom and the standard of entry and judges in the livestock, Poultry and Agricultural produce was apparently extremely high with some very generous prizes for best in show in all categories.
The local venues included the Victoria Athletic Grounds off Southport Road, owned by James Eastham and used not only for the various sporting elements of the Gala but also the judging of the various elaborate floats and tableaux.

The parade on Empire Day, 24th May 1902
The first Empire Day held on 24th May 1902 and we have images of the event in Ormskirk as the parade passes the King’s Arms, Moor Street.
The Parish Church held a Sunday School Anniversary, or Walking Day, in July each year when the children walked from Greetby Fields, along Stanley Street, Moor Street and then up Church Street for a special service in the Church.
Military parades in the town were held on many occasions and Ormskirk Bygone Times holds a number of images from across the years, if anyone would like to share photos and stories of the town’s social events please visit our page at facebook.com/Ormskirkbygonetimes
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An Ormskirk Christmas
An Ormskirk Christmas

The Nativity Scene outside Ormskirk Parish Chrurch
Ormskirk Bygone Times has been collecting the memories of our page followers over the last couple of years and it seems that amongst our 5000+ followers, many people share the same memories of the Ormskirk Christmas experience.
For many children the season was about visiting Father Christmas in his grotto at Burgesses on Church Street. Or to those a bit younger, Parker Franks on the same site.
The traditional junior school Nativity plays bring back memories of red shiny paper used for a fire and silver tinsel wrapped around coat hangers for Angel halos. Boys dressing gowns for Shepherds coats and singing Away In A Manger to our beaming parents sitting quietly watching, not a digital appliance in site, just the brain to record the memories and a photo for the local paper.

Our very own Dot as an angel in her school Nativity play
School Christmas dinners were exciting and at the end of the meal Father Christmas dropped in, oddly enough he never looked like the one in Burgesses.
Mahoods on Beaconsfield corner had a Christmas Toy department upstairs with train sets laid out and running. Taylors on Moor Street was full of seasonal gifts and toys.
The Nativity Scene at the Parish Church has changed little over the years, a plastic screen on the front to protect the contents from theft or damage being the main change.
Shops in the town offered seasonal fayre of the highest quality. Butchers provided local fresh Pork,Turkey and Goose with home delivery.

Moor Street in the late 1960s
Car Parks were unheard of until the late 1960s, before then parking was wherever you needed to be and for however long you chose, although most people walked into town and carried their shopping home themselves.
The town had everything people needed for a comfortable family Christmas and it was all done without excess or t’internet with most workers having just a couple of days off.
Many people will remember the winter of 1962/63 when snow drifts 6ft to 8 ft high almost caused a problem. It was nothing a few men with spades couldn’t put right.
A selection of adverts relating to Christmas in Ormskirk
Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show – Sept 1904
“Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World” Travelling Show – September 1904
During the 1904 tour of the “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World” travelling show, the touring company passed through Ormskirk on the way to Southport from the previous venue in Wigan.

Cody with the Cowboys and ‘US Cavalry’
September 30th 1904 the main body of the show travelled by several dedicated trains from Wigan through to Southport but the stagecoach and several dozen of the show riders paraded through the town, no doubt to create some publicity.
The show travelled from New York to Liverpool in Spring 1904 and then used 4 special trains to travel to the first venue, Stoke on Trent.

Buffalo Bill with the Oglala Lakota
The 1904 UK tour began in Stoke on 25th April and after performances in England, Scotland and Wales and 132 towns the tour ended in Hanley, Staffordshire on October 21st. A total of 4114 miles of train travel took the performers around the country and the shows were hugely well attended.
There had been an earlier tour during 1902/03 but the nearest it came to Ormskirk was Liverpool and local people had waited for the return of the show and lined the streets to watch the different riders parade past.
There weren’t just ‘Cowboys and Indians’ in the show, as it had been previously, this time there were Cossack horsemen from Georgia, Mexican Vaqueros, Turks, Argentine Gauchos, Arab Spahis (Horse Soldiers) , and Mongolian riders. The parade must have been colourful and spectacular.
Oglala Lakota Sioux were a huge part of the show and performed throughout the history of the Buffalo Bill shows giving some thrilling performances that must have had crowds mesmerised and enthralled, especially the young children watching the show. Although Sitting Bull had left the show a decade or more earlier, his son, Young Sitting Bull did apparently appear in this tour.
After leaving Southport the tour went on to Leigh and newspaper accounts of the event still survive.
Ormskirk Bygone Times has created a small display and booklet on the tour and the show which will be available to view at our exhibition in Skelmersdale Library on Saturday 28th November 2015. Please call in for a chat and to see our growing mobile exhibition.
Mobile Phone?
Mobile Phone?

Taken this week by OBT follower James, this photo shows the relocated phone box adjacent to the clock tower.
Anyone strolling through Ormskirk this week would have been rather startled and taken aback by the sudden appearance of a red telephone kiosk adjacent to the Clock Tower. Heads swivelled as people passed the bright red obelisk daring to compete with the towering iconic stature of the town centre Clock.
It’s apparently not a permanent fixture and has shuffled across the street from outside the HSBC, where it had languished since the late 70s/early 80s. Quite where it had been before that has not been ascertained.
This particular kiosk is not as historically valuable as the grade 11 listed kiosk near to the TSB in Derby Street. The grade 11 listing was awarded because the Derby Street box is a ‘Jubilee Box’, so named as it was designed to commemorate the Silver Jubilee of George V and Queen Mary, our present Queen’s grandparents, in 1936. A gold Tudor Crown appears on all four sides of the kiosk close to the roof, although the gold painting of the crowns was a modern idea to accentuate the heritage value of these boxes, the crown was originally red.

The previous location of the phone box outside HSBC
In 1953 Queen Elizabeth had all crowns changed to the St Edward’s Crown, the Coronation crown and the kiosk on Moor Street has this crown, dating it to around 1953.
Ormskirk’s growing modern population living on the new estates around the outskirts of the town relied on these kiosks as their main form of emergency contact. Home phones were not a common service in many homes in the 1930s, 40’s, 50’s and even 60’s. The town was well served for kiosks though, with town centre ones at the (old) Bus Station on Knowsley Road, on Moor Street outside what is now Middleton’s cycles, three outside the main Post Office and further out there were boxes on Tower Hill, near Hallsworth’s, Thompson Avenue, outside Pigott’s and Dyers Lane as well as on County Road near the Fire Station and Scott Estate.

The Grade II listed kiosk on Derby Street can be seen in the background of this photo taken c. 1950
The essential service they provided meant that people have clear memories of the occasions when these kiosks played an important part in their lives whether it was ringing the midwife in the middle of the night, contacting the police in an emergency or just using it to ring school friends / sweethearts who were waiting outside their local box for a pre-arranged call.
Next time you pass your local kiosk take a moment to appreciate its iconic status and the role it has played in our developing world of technology.
Ormskirk Bygone Times have a mobile display available for any local group or event, the display covers a vast array of stories and histories of the townspeople and buildings
The Troqueer Building: Grand Town Residence To Labour Party HQ

The Troqueer Building
Troqueer was a small settlement on the East side of Aughton Street that in the mid-1800s housed a huge Irish Immigrant population, all crammed into an area of small courts containing rows of tightly packed, hastily constructed cottages. St Patrick’s Court, situated between the Black Horse Inn and the Victoria Inn (later the Queens) was almost exclusively for the Irish Agricultural labourers who came into the town to find work they were familiar with.
Looking at the 1851 and 1861 census returns for St Patrick’s Court, there are dozens and dozens of children, all under 10 years old, all born Ormskirk and without exception, both parents are recorded as born Ireland. The Irish Agricultural Labourers were welcomed to the town, the Railway had brought them in after having enticed many local agricultural labourers into jobs on the railway and the trade the railway subsequently brought into the town meant that for local workers, other job opportunities other than working in agriculture presented themselves.
Moving northwards beyond St Patrick’s Court, and its accompanying beerhouse , the buildings change to the grand first residence, before he moved to Ormskirk Hall, Burscough Street, of Dr Charles Price Symonds, the Yorkshire born surgeon, who, on moving to Ormskirk to set up his practise in the late 1840s and married a local girl, Martha Stockley, in 1850, before opening his first surgery in a large house with landscaped gardens to the rear and adjoining on its north side the the large double fronted town residence of retired Pwhelli born landed proprietor, Hugh Owen, which as early as 1851 was named on town maps as the Troqueer Buildings. Hugh Owen lived there as far back as 1841, being listed under, ‘Nobility, Gentry and Clergy’ in an 1848 Slater’s Directory. Although 20 years earlier he had a tinplate works in Market Place. Hugh Owen died aged 83 in 1856 and was buried at the Parish Church on 7th July that year.
After Owen’s death, his son Richard Owen inherited Troqueer and moved in there with his family. Richard Owen was an ironmonger with an ironmongers and small foundry on Moor Street next to the King’s Arms, which later, when Richard Owen retired to Scarborough after 1871, became Wainwright’s Ironmongers and then the Corn Exchange.

A Cammack Mineral Water Bottle
Troqueer saw changes during the 1870s and was split into a smaller residence for Henry Hydes, the wine and spirit merchant, with some of the rear of the property being made into a court for separate small dwellings, when Hydes moved across the road to 32 Aughton Street to open a wine merchants shop, Troqueer was bought by George James Cammack, the Mineral Water Manufacturer who ran the business with great success for several decades from those premises. The Water Manufacturing business was huge at that time as bottled mineral water was a safe and healthy option to pump water. Remains of the factory we believe still exist to the rear of Aughton Street across to Bridge Avenue.
George James Cammack only moved from Troqueer between 1916 and 1919. The next information we have is that the building became the Labour Party Headquarters in the town and was used as the campaign HQ for the Ormskirk candidate 28 year old Harold Wilson in 1945. Wilson served as the Town’s MP from 1945 until 1950.
The descriptions of the grand interior court of Troqueer mention large black marble columns and huge black painted doors. The building was demolished in the 1970s and remains as the telephone exchange car park. If anyone can add anything, or indeed correct any of this research, please do get in touch.