Westminster Road: Difference between revisions

'''North from Charles Street'''

Although Westminster Road was one of the earliest streets in Hoole it was not a through road until the 1880s. Before that date the first 100 yards or so from Hoole Road were a gated access (the pillars remain today) to serve the rear of Egerton Terrace and Swinfen Villas. These two properties were a part of Moor Park whose boundary wall made the street north from Charles Street into a cul-de-sac. A petition signed by 200 residents to remove the wall was presented to the local Council in 1871.

 

In those 100 yards, on the eastern side Williams Terrace (now Nos.4-10) was built, to be joined in 1894 by the new Hoole Urban District Council's Offices, a house (No.2) for the Sanitary Inspector, and the base for the Hoole Volunteer Fire Service. It is just possible to decipher Hoole Urban District Council on the front of the tyre depot today. By 1902 a Fire Station had been erected on the site, and after the Council moved to The Elms in 1924 the offices were used by Moffat and Gillespie for their drapery business, and the Fire Station became a lino and curtain warehouse run by Greenaway and Sons.

On the western side the gardens to Egerton Terrace were sold in 1884 to build a row of houses (Nos.1-11), and a Welsh Wesleyan Chapel, the site of which became G.F. Brammall's garage, complete with petrol pump; this later became Bill Smith's Motorcycles and is now an enclosed area for Lewis’s Ice Cream vans.

 

The shop there first appears in an 1857 Directory and 1861 Census as a grocer's and baker's run by Thomas Balshaw who became the landlord at the Bromfield Arms. After his death in 1874, his son Richard ran the business and opened Hoole's first Post Office there. It was occupied pre-1902 by Jones & Davies and then solely by Thomas Jones who continued on his own as a baker and grocer. There are pictures of the shop and also separately of their horse drawn cart daily deliveries of bread continuing from their later premises at 3 Charles Street (now Chatwins) until the 1950's). Lewis's was established in Warrington in 1888 but did not come to Hoole until after 1906.

 

'''South of Charles Street'''

Westminster Road was originally called Peploe Street after the Peploe-Wards who married into the Hamilton family. In 1865 the Marquis, later to be the Duke, of Westminster, built the School for Girls & Infants lower down the Street and enlarged it in 1895; in recognition, the Street was re-named Westminster Road. The School became Hoole Community Centre in 1987.