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View of Colne centre just 50 years ago
WELCOME to our first column of 2010 and this week we feature a rare colour photo with an evocative view of just how Colne looked a half-century ago.
Yes, back to a time of family businesses, very little traffic, no litter and Colne could boast of two splendid cinemas and had a grand total of 26 pubs. The year is circa 1960 and within just a couple of years, this nostalgic scene of the town of yesteryear would be sadly gone forever.
The camera has captured Market Street from the top of Skipton Road looking towards the now lost, palatial cinema, the Savoy, which is today converted into the Farmfoods store.
Note the 1950s superb motor which is, I've been reliably informed, a Ford Consul Mark 2. See also the familiar BCN double-decker bus travelling just past Tom Wilson's shop.
On the left hand side of our picture are the many, long-established shops which would soon be bulldozed to the ground in the Market Street clearance during the early 1960s.
First up far left, with the huge gold Turog bread sign above, is the confectioners run by Harry Smith. Next is the Excel knitting shop followed by Allen and Ambrey, the needlework shop.
Now we come to Jack Crossley's, newsagents and tobacconists, then it's George Heys, the greengrocers, and Parker's Printers, and the Colne Co-operative Store completes this row of much-missed, personal service shops between Newtown Street and Railway Street.
Behind this wonderful row of shops were the ancient and historic buildings of Holmes Place, Parkinsons Place and Vipond Place, all lost during the demolition.
During the summer of 1958, I worked at the Co-op on Market Street as a grocer's boy. It was just as if stepping back in a Charles Dickens novel. Everything had to be weighed up (no pre-packed food back then).
Every Monday, in the back room with a hissing gas-light above, I would weigh hundreds of bags of sugar, dried peas, sultanas, currants, rice and, worst of all, self-raising flour which, after weighing up 100 one-pound bags and 50 three-pound bags, I always ended up looking like the abominable snowman!
I wouldn't have missed it for the world – they were truly happy days.
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Weather for Pendle
Tuesday 07 February 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: -6 C to 2 C
Wind Speed: 8 mph
Wind direction: South east
Tomorrow
Sunny spells
Temperature: -5 C to 0 C
Wind Speed: 9 mph
Wind direction: South
