Harry Rutherford's
Festival of Britain Mural

Tuesday, 2 August 2011

Clarendon Place

Clarendon Place in the late 1950's with coaches taking people on their *Wakes holidays.
The buildings on the left were replaced  quite some years ago now and the road was pedestrianised . The corner shop was called Stowells Off Licence - this is now the Bradford and Bingley building society . If I remember correctly the large shop in the foreground was a shop that sold prams and cots etc. It is now a furniture shop.


*Wakes were originally religious festivals that commemorated church dedications. During the Industrial Revolution the tradition of the wakes was adapted into a regular summer holiday particularly, but not exclusively, in the north of England and industrialised areas of the Midlands where each locality would nominate a wakes week during which the industries would close down for a week. The wakes holiday was an unpaid holiday when the mills and factories were closed for maintenance. In 1906 an agreement on unpaid holidays was reached which became the pattern for the wakes holidays in the Lancashire mill towns. It was implemented in 1907. The expansion of the railway network led Blackpool to become a seaside resort catering mainly for the Lancashire working classes. Southport catered for the slightly better off and Morecambe attracted visitors from the West Riding textile towns.

Present day

The tradition still exists in some parts of England, although its significance has declined in recent decades. It was commonplace for schools to allocate a one week holiday coinciding with wakes week in lieu of holiday time elsewhere in the year;— typically the May half term holiday or the end of the summer holiday in August. Schools began to discontinue the wakes week holiday after the introduction of the National Curriculum and the standardisation of school holidays across England, and it rarely exists today.



Tom said...

Excellent picture and great information about the Wakes' Not a picture that I've seen before which is a bonus.

Dave Williams said...

I've got a newspaper cutting with this photo on, and it says it was taken in July 1950. I'll email it to you.

westarsteve said...

hello team i seem to recall in the buildings on the left was the school dentist before it transfered to the clinic on greenfield street i seem to remember going to have my teeth checked there

Werneth Low said...

The building on the left, as mentioned by westarsteve, was the Reform Club. The school dentist was there - I remember having to make many visits in the 1950s. The dentist who saw me was Miss Kippen - a witch of a woman if ever there was one.