16 amazing nostalgic pictures of Warrington from the past and today

As reported last week, Janice Hayes has published Warrington Reflections.

The book tells the story of a changing Warrington through amazing pictures of the same view shot in the past and today.

Here are 8 of our favourites from the book which is out in shops later this week.

The former Argos store

What was Argos on the corner of Bridge Street

In the 1990s Bridge Street was still free of the trees which line the present-day street hiding

many of the facades of the fine buildings.

However, many conservationists felt that the 1960s-style Argos showroom on the corner of Rylands Street, which had replaced the Royal Court hotel, needed to be hidden, as it was out of keeping with the rest of the street’s Grade II listed architecture. Its recent replacement mimics the brick and stone of neighbouring buildings.

What was Argos on the corner of Bridge Street

Riverside Retail Park

Riverside Retail Park

By the 19th century the River Mersey was a major transport highway serving the town’s industries.

Although most activity was concentrated at Bank Quay a second dock developed at Bishop’s Wharf serving mainly local tanneries and paper mills.

By the late 1950s many of the tanneries had closed and the riverboats soon disappeared. A new retail park has replaced Bishop’s Wharf which has been demolished, although the Pizza Hut outlet echoes the warehouse’s design.

Riverside Retail Park

Market Gate

Market Gate

By the later 1970s work was already beginning on the Golden Square development behind Horsemarket Street and Sankey Street. Many of the old shops were in limbo and the familiar Ovaltine sign had disappeared with the closure of Milling’s grocers shop. To brighten the scene Greenall’s commissioned cartoonist Bill Tidy to bring Moscow to Market Gate in a spoof advert for their Vladivar Vodka and a few surprised motorists wondered if they had taken a wrong turning!

Market Gate

Sankey Street

Sankey Street

The early twentieth-century view towards Market Gate from the corner of Springfield Street revealed that Sankey Street had yet to become a major traffic route. On the right-hand corner was the ornate façade of the Picturedrome cinema which was remodelled as the Cameo by the 1950s. Nearer to the corner of Legh Street (now hidden by the trees on the left) the street narrowed to a potential traffic bottleneck which has now disappeared.

Sankey Street

Stockton Heath village

Stockton Heath and The Mulberry Tree

The tranquil sepia scene of Stockton Heath in the early 1900s is barely recognisable as Victoria Square. Renamed in honour of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee of 1897, the area had previously been known to locals as Pigeon Bank. The horse bus was soon replaced by trams, which necessitated the demolition of Beaconsfield Terrace (left). The Old Mulberry Tree Inn (centre) was rebuilt in 1907.

Stockton Heath and The Mulberry Tree

The Queens Cinema, Orford Lane

The Queen's Cinema on Orford Lane

Long before the days of television, the internet and the family car Warringtonians found their entertainment at the movies. The Queens Cinema in Orford Lane was just one of the local picture palaces where people could escape from the reality of daily life. Changing fashions saw cinemas all over the country demolished in the later twentieth century and the Orford Lane site became first a garage and later a car wash.

The Queen's Cinema on Orford Lane

The Packet House

The Packet House pub (left of both images) identifies this as a view down Mersey Street from near the Academy. By 2022 the former pub seemed to be in terminal decline. The buildings to the right have been demolished since the 1990s image which shows Mersey Street curving to the left creating a traffic bottleneck. The shops and old tannery chimneys were cleared away creating a post-industrial landscape which became the approach to the second river crossing.