I thought that I might just repost the old photo that I put on the forum a few months ago showing Wharf Road.
This caused lots of discussions and seemed to be of very great interest to Horwich Ender and Rock Banker. In fact there was so much discussion about the circular, stone wall that a competition was introduced and the first person to guess the usage of the structure won a prize; from memory I think it was a vintage car donated by George.
To this day I don’t think we have had a winner but there were some great efforts:
Horwich Ender thought it was a prison.
Rock Banker thought it was Whaley’s own wall of death. Did he offer to ride it by the way?
Somebody thought it was something to do with the Roosdyche and the Romans had built it as a sort of mini Colosseum. I don’t know what he was on.
Fedup with great anticipation lovingly thought it could be a whisky distillery.
It certainly wasn’t a smoking shelter for The White Hart.
Surprisingly there were no guesses from the Whaley Eleven.
In addition to that structure other things that were talked about were the chimneys in the middle of Whaley, the large gas lamp and various other long gone buildings but one thing on the photo that brought absolutely no comment whatsoever was the forgotten bridge.
Take another look: follow the train line up towards Horwich End. First we have Wharf Road Bridge, then we have the forgotten bridge that goes underneath the railway track, then we have the bridge near Stanways and finally we can see the bridge on Old Road that the train drives under.
The forgotten bridge is on Wharf Court, off Wharf Road and emerges behind The Memories of India. And it’s a little belter; bigger and better than the Wharf Road bridge.
How many people looked at the photo and didn’t notice it? How many people have driven/walked past The Memories of India and not noticed it. It is quite clear to see even when driving past.
Now careful in the morning we don’t want any accidents while driving past Jack Hallam’s do we?
Anyway maybe Mr Jackson might retrieve his old and extremely valuable O/S map and come up with a road name for us. It couldn’t possibly be another Station Road could it?
R. S-S