Orchard Square History

[Plain Talker]

Not to worry, greybeard, the two locations are less than 50 yards from each other, so it is easy to confuse them.

 

Those photos were fascinating, BTW:- especially the pic of the house where Peace was alleged to have escaped from! (I attended a WEA course earlier this year on Peace, which was absolutely fascinating.)

[crookesey]

I used to park in the alley in the 60's and 70's, I never realised that the remains of the buildings on the left were tenements, I always thought that they were little mesters shops.

 

There was also another alley at the back of M&S, you could only see it from the top floor of the old YMCA, at the corner of Fargate and Norfolk Row, I think that this was the original Fargate as the current one was part of Sheffield Church cemetery.

 

Looking at the older version I can envisage Mr Barker opening the sluice gates in Barkers Pool, to clean out the animal mess in Fargate.

[grinder]

I used to park in the alley in the 60's and 70's, I never realised that the remains of the buildings on the left were tenements, I always thought that they were little mesters shops.

 

There was also another alley at the back of M&S, you could only see it from the top floor of the old YMCA, at the corner of Fargate and Norfolk Row, I think that this was the original Fargate as the current one was part of Sheffield Church cemetery.

 

Looking at the older version I can envisage Mr Barker opening the sluice gates in Barkers Pool, to clean out the animal mess in Fargate.

 

Wonder if he did that for free ?

[hazel]

Thanks for posting the photo of the clinic Greybeard it takes me back more than 50 years when I used to work there.

 

The shop on the right is where the baby food (called National Dried Milk )

and cod liver oil was sold.

And through the doors at the bottom of the lane was both the baby clinic and the maternity clinic

Family planning requisites could only be purchased at a private partitioned off window staffed by an older woman-- it was not considered a decent subject for our tender ears, we were in our 20s.

hazel

[hillsbro]

The occupants of Orchard Street and Orchard Place in the early 1970s can be seen on this scan from the 1973 Kelly's Directory.

 

http://s169.photobucket.com/albums/u219/twigmore/Directories/?action=view&current=OrchardStreet.jpg

 

The raincoat shop on the corner of Orchard Place sold top-quality coats but they weren't cheap. The Museum pub is still there at 25 Orchard Street. The swop shop (City Exchange) was still there when the area was redeveloped; in the 1960s it had been a tobacconist's.

 

I well remember the clinic. I went there in 1965 for a dose of oral polio vaccine. Nobody told me I was supposed to crunch the sugar lump - it hurt all the way down..

 

Next to the clinic at the left side of Orchard Place was Di Nitto's watchmaker's shop as shown in Kelly's. After this closed there was an antique shop there, which also sold reproduction antiques. They did a nice line in wrought iron chastity belts...