(click for larger version)
Many thanks to Syd Bird for this old photo of Market Street, taken from around the junction with Elm Grove and facing toward Meols. It’s hard not to notice the giant cyclist riding down Market Street …funny how angles can deceive!
The “Hovis” buildings on the left are where the library is today. The buildings on the right therefore must be Hoylake School of Dance and the offices for accountants Ainley Cookson. That sandstone, protruding wall is the side of The 3 Sisters grocers – see if I’m right by using street view.
Scan the various shop signs and you can make out part of the word Joseph. That’ll be this chap, Joseph Iles, who had not one but two shops along Market Street (street number 102 being the one in the photo, number 36 is the Indira Tandoori), and who baked not just plain biscuits but fancy ones too:
SURELY THE GENTLEMAN THAT LOOKS SO OUT OF PROPORTION IS ON A PENNY FARTHING BYCYCLE”””
MY LATE FATHER-IN-LAW USED TO RIDE ONE . IN FACT HE BROKE HIS NOSE BY FALLING OFF HIS WHILE DOFFING HIS CAP TO A LADY.
The Hovis cottage is part of what was once called Hoose Corner – before the railway was built you could catch an omnibus to Birkenhead from here. Another old photo of this site seems to show the name as Carrs’ Mills – they had horsedrawn bakers vans that my father could recall hitching a lift on the back while riding a bicycle…….the whitewashed building on the otehr side of the road is the site of what used to be Woolworths. I’d like to know more about Cockle Alley (Elm Terrace) if anyone’s memories go back that far….
Hi Andy,
with reference to Cockle Alley, I don`t know if you have read the articles written by Charles Roberts between 1914-1916 .These apparently appeared in the Hoylake Free Press and were all about Hoylake in bygone years. In Chapter 14 there is some info about Cockle Alley,apparently it`s official name was Shaws Yard. Just a little further along Market Street there was also “Meadows Yard” opposite the Kingsway Cinema and “Birds Yard” which was located on the site which later became the KIngsway.
Thanks Syd – I’d never heard of Bird and Meadows Yard – thanks! Thanks too for all these great photos, many of which I’ve never seen before.
I lived at 1 Elm Terrace. We were told our back entry was calld Cockle Alley., as all the residents in the old terrace nos 1-9 were cocklers at one time.When we moved there in 1947 our next door neighbour was Mrs Morris who was then in her nineties and used to tell me that when her children were small the tide came into her house and she used to put the children on the kitchen table for safety.
Thanks a lot, Jackie – really interesting!