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Wigan Pier : The facts and fictions of an enduring Music Hall joke

Wigan Pier : The facts and fictions of an enduring Music Hall joke


John Hannavy

144 pages. 210x148mm. Printed on gloss art paper, card covers.

ISBN13 : 9781911038139

£9.99

silver, arsenic, tungsten, zinc, iron and uranium. What made this unparalleled productivity possible was the development, pioneered by Cornishman Richard Trevithick, of the Cornish beam engine, a reciprocating steam engine capable of driving pumps that could keep the ever-deepening mines free of water. Although few of these great engines survive, many of the buildings in which they were housed remain to this day, forming characteristic features of the landscape that have come to symbolize the rich mining heritage of

Wigan Pier : The facts and fictions of an enduring Music Hall joke - Sample Images

sample book illustration
This card, published before 1920, may be the earliest to apply the ‘Wigan Pier’ name to the coal tippler known as Bankes's Pier. Clearly playing to the joke, the word ‘Pier’ is written within quotation marks suggesting that at this point it was still the ‘so-called’ Wigan Pier. An almost fully-laden steam-powered wide-boat is tied up just beyond the tipping mechanism.
sample book illustration
Wigan-born George Formby is commemorated in the town by a statue in the Grand Arcade. For a time in 2014, the statue was removed as someone had deemed it a health and safety hazard but now it is back! The idea that Formby, even in statue form, presented a risk to public safety would have amused him, as he was more used to being considered – at least by some – an affront to public decency.