Wigan Pier

Wigan Pier is the name given today to the area around the canal at the bottom of the Wigan flight of locks on the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. It is a popular location for visitors and the local community in Wigan, Greater Manchester, England, situated just a few hundred yards south-west of the town centre. The name "Wigan Pier" has humorous or ironic connotations since it conjures an image of a seaside pleasure pier, whereas Wigan is in fact an inland and traditionally industrial town.

The original "pier" at Wigan was a coal loading staithe, probably a wooden jetty, where wagons from a nearby colliery were unloaded into waiting barges on the canal. The original wooden pier is believed to have been demolished in 1929, with the iron from the tippler (a mechanism for tipping coal into the barges) being sold as scrap.

The origin of what really was 'Wigan Pier' goes that in 1891, an excursion train to Southport got delayed on the outskirts of Wigan not long after leaving Wallgate Station. At that time a long wooden gantry or trestle carried a mineral line from Lamb and Moore's Newtown Colliery on Scot Lane, to their Meadows Colliery in Frog Lane (where the Council refuse centre is now). This gantry was quite a structure as it had to span the Douglas valley crossing the river, the canal and the main rail line to Southport. As the delayed train waited for the signals to change one of the travellers remarked "where the b... hell are we?" and the reply became the basis for the immortal joke about the Wigan's Pier. George Formby, Sr. perpetuated the joke around the turn of the century in the music halls in Wigan adding that when he passed the Pier he noticed the tide was in (referring to the constant flooding in the low-lying area). George died in December 1920 and, with the demise of the collieries in the area, the gantry had long passed out of existence. Therefore, when people looked for the Pier, the tippler for coal wagons at the canal terminus became the chosen object of the joke The tippler became the favoured location when people subsequently wanted to see it. There are references to it in songs such as George Formby Junior's On the Wigan Boat Express.

In 1937, Wigan was featured in the title of George Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier, which dealt, in large part, with the living conditions of England's working poor. In response to a critic, Orwell insisted "He [Orwell] liked Wigan very much — the people, not the scenery. Indeed, he has only one fault to find with it, and that is in respect of the celebrated Wigan Pier, which he had set his heart on seeing. Alas! Wigan Pier had been demolished, and even the spot where it used to stand is no longer certain." Some have embraced the Orwellian link, as it has provided the area with a modest tourist base over the years. "It seems funny to celebrate Orwell for highlighting all our bad points, but Wigan wouldn't be anywhere near as famous without him," said the Wigan Pier Experience's manager, Carole Tyldesley. "In the end George Orwell has proved to be a strong marketing tool." Others regard this connection as disappointing, considering it an insinuation that Wigan is no better now than it was at the time of Orwell's writing.

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