Stamford Street Central
Introduction
The photograph on this page of Stamford Street Central by David Dixon as part of the Geograph project.
The Geograph project started in 2005 with the aim of publishing, organising and preserving representative images for every square kilometre of Great Britain, Ireland and the Isle of Man.
There are currently over 7.5m images from over 14,400 individuals and you can help contribute to the project by visiting https://www.geograph.org.uk
Image: © David Dixon Taken: 4 Jun 2011
Looking, from Old Square, down Stamford Street . Looking at this photo, taken on a busy Saturday afternoon when the market and the Ladysmith precinct were packed, it is hard to believe that Stamford Street was once a thriving shopping street at the heart of Ashton. Walking down here in the 1950s, one could hardly walk on the pavement because so many people were shopping all the way down both sides of the street with its mixture of high-end specialist shops down to the small independents as well as the national high street chain stores together with further shops in the adjoining arcades. The decline of Stamford Street began in the 1960s when the town centre by-pass (Park Parade) was built to the south of the town. Instead of doing similar to the north and east of the town, Oldham Road was widened and cut through the middle of Stamford Street to join the by-pass. The decline of Stamford Street was further exacerbated with the building of the new precinct causing Stamford Street to lose its big-name shops (Woolworths, Littlewoods, Timothy Whites/Boots etc) leaving it in a sorry state by the early 1970s. Nowadays, only by looking at the Victorian facades high above the modern shop fronts do you get a glimpse of its past glories. I think that the furnishing shop on the left might have been Woolworth's in the 1950s). Maybe Stamford Street would have declined anyway, like many of the High Streets around the country as smaller independent retailers struggle to compete, but the planning decisions taken in the 1960s certainly hastened the decline and left this area of Ashton a mess for decades.