The Oldham War Memorial ………. a trip to Bell Vue and a mackintosh

Now there is nothing very remarkable about this picture postcard of the Oldham War Memorial.

Instead it is the message on the back, written just two years after the memorial was unveiled in 1923 that caught my attention.

Eva began by asking “Isn’t this a nice picture?  But quickly changed the tone and continued, “Have been thinking since sending the parcel we shall all be at ‘Belle Vue’ on Saturday afternoon so please send my mackintosh etc. to get here Monday or Tuesday, please!”

The card was posted on Thursday morning to Mrs. A Hooks, of 25 Roberts Road, Boscombe, Bournemouth.

Just whether the mackintosh arrived or just what the afternoon at ‘Bell Vue’ was like we shall never know.

Location; Oldham

Picture; Oldham War Memorial circa 1923-25, from the collection of David Harrop

On Union Street in Oldham in 1928

Now I wish I knew Union Street in Oldham better because I cannot fix exactly where we are.

The card was sent in 1928 but the image may be a little earlier and none of the usual clues are much help to work out where we are.

It is impossible to decipher the names of the shops, there are no side roads to offer up a location and even the tram running on the number 4 route could be coming from or heading towards Mumps.

The building on the right looks promising and looks to be a snooker hall which may jog someone’s memory

So that just leaves us with the scene itself which has a lot to offer.

It has those wide windows to admit the maximum light and the characteristic coloured glazed tiles which would have brightened up that drab workaday street.

To our right is a milk cart with its single churn and another almost opposite.

Neither horse seems over worried at the approaching tram or the parked cars.

Within a few decades there would very few horses left on Oldham streets and likewise the last tram took its final journey in 1946.

There had been a horse drawn tram service from 1880 but within twenty years this had been replaced by the familiar ones powered by electricity.

But by the 1920s the cost of maintaining the track and replacing old trams led to the use of motor buses on some routes, a policy which began in earnest in 1934.

So our stately tram on its circular route along Union Street in the January of 1928 had but a short time left to run.

And that seems a sensible point to finish, secure in the knowledge that someone will not only know where we are on Union Street but will furnish chapter and verse on the scene in front of us.

But for those who want more on Oldham’s trams there is Oldham Corporation Tramways





Picture; Union Street in Oldham, circa 1928, issued by Lilywhite Ltd, from the series Oldham and district, courtesy of Tuck DB, http://tuckdb.org/


*Oldham Corporation Tramway http://www.birches.plus.com/page148/page151/page231/page231.html