*click for larger
Many thanks to Gerry Mort for this rare image of a WWII Victory Parade marching along Market Street. Gerry sent in the image in response to my request last week for more photos of wartime Hoylake. Commenting on this week’s photo, Gerry says:
This is a photo of the police contingent taking part in the Victory Parade passed the Council Offices in 1945. The person taking the salute can be seen holding a top hat. My father Charles Mort, is the sergeant leading the parade. The police officer in the centre of the front rank is Bill Reeves who lived in Elm Terrace and was the father of Jackie Reeves. The boy on the bicycle was the son of a police officer called Barker (I think).
Can you make out the sign to the shop in the background …I’m fairly sure it says Wine Merchants? That’s quite a coincidence as the same shop was recently Hoylake Wines and before that it was a Threshers off-licence for several years.
I have a similar picture to this kept by Dad, Bill Reeves, and I wondered if Selwyn Lloyd took the Salute., but coming the other way down Market street.
Was the Wine Merchants Mackie and Gladstone?
Mackie and Gladstone sounds right to me. Hope I might see you on 23 rd Jackie.
Am trying to get a contact for Rob Lydiate- can anyone help??
Will put a note through his door.
The first shop just behind the crowd was Josephine Taylers Ladies Fashion Shop a very high class ladies shop. I remember buying a navy blue suit there once when I got engaged it was made out off moygashel fabric. Does anyone remember that material, it used to crease like mad.
Helen Carr
Victoria Doran comments:
The off licence was Mackies – it was there thru the 50s & 60s as well
My mother took me to the Victory Parade I was not quite five years old. I remember some people standing on the little balcony over the Town Hall. V.J. day had not happened then and my father was a prisoner off the Japanese on the island off Taiwan[Formosa] he did not come home untill the following January 1946
I have a photo of my grandpa ( it looks like Meols drive to me) he was wearing a uniform and it was taken in the 40’s – he fought in WW1 and was wounded in Passchendaele so I wondered if it was the home guard