Shops and Retail in Leek

Shops and Markets of Yesteryear...



When you look at the new retail stores of today, their windows have little character like the shop frontage and presentations of yesteryear. Leek like many towns of victorian era had many characteristics amongst the retail trade that are worlds apart from today. You will not walk down a town centre today and observe men selling cattle to make a living, do not get me wrong, cattle and livestock is still sold yet not in the original market places where they used to. Leek cattle market used to stand where the Smithfield centre stands today, and there was no monument on the square like regular visitors to Leek will see, oh no, by the Cattle market inn and The Talbot public houses and even the small roundabout by the square and its monument, stood what was the cattle market of Leek, a huge area for selling livestock in its day.

Here are the draymen and their horses outside the pub in the market square! You wont see these today, more like a wagon or two bringing in barrels of beer and bottles of all sorts.

The following photos show what selling from shops and the market was like a few decades ago.

This guy is W. Fallon and seemed to have a few different shops in Leek at the time!
Here are traders at the cattle market, as mentioned before, situated where the bus station and Smithfield centre, mini roundabout and square with monument stand today.

There were many modes of transport in the victorian era, canal barge usage was one of them, here is Leek canal basin that was, sadly it is not there anymore, instead an industrial estate stands where the canal basin and wharf used to be.

Leeks Industrial Times

What was Leek known for?

Well some know that Longton, Stoke and Hanley were renown for bottle kilns, the pottery industry, such as Spode, Wedgewood, Royal Doulton, Aynsley to name a few, yet Leek and Macclesfield have been known for materials such as the silk and textile industry which moves up towards lancashire where you have such places as Styal in Cheshire, Blackburn and other Cheshire and Lancashire towns that were known for the cotton industries.

Such places as Brough, Nicholson and Hall Ltd, and S Mayers and Company, Wardle and Davenport, Clemesha Brothers and Birch were known for manufacturing textile products, garments and household goods in the 1930s. One hazard with the textile firms though was the risk of a factory fire, Brough, Nicholson and Halls major fire happened in 1915, on the 31st August, the photos are the evidence.

Where there are and were mills, there would be mill workers houses, alot of them were 3 or 4 storeys high (if you count the cellars) here, you can see the demolition of houses that once stood in Stockwell street, beside the Nicholson institute. Some houses of this style can be seen in Albion Street and King street as I have seen them myself. If you have read before this in my blog you would have seen the two pictures I took of King street.

Deep Haye Country Park

Like many a country park in Britain, some were once an industry and once the industry had gone, buildings demolished, the area was kept as a park area. Brough Hall once stood on the grounds we now know in Leek as Brough Park, Deep Haye country park was it seems a brickworks industry.

"A group of workmen at "all Grange Brickworks at about the turn of the century. The works closed in 1960, after a long and chequered history, when the kilns and workshops were demolished. The area has now been landscaped, and forms part of the Deep Haye Country Park.