Digital Hearing Aids Wigan – Greater Manchester Digital Hearing Aids

Digital Hearing Aids Wigan – Greater Manchester Digital Hearing Aids

If you come from Wigan, did you know that you share your home with Heinz Baked Beans, The Verve and Wigan Pier and that Wigan Warriors were one of the founding members of the Northern Rugby League?

Well listen up all you pie-eaters and we’ll tell you the stories of these iconic links to Wigan.  If you aren’t hearing us too well, we know somewhere that can help – see here.  Yes if you have hearing problems that may have been caused by a number of reasons, we know that our team at Castle Hearing Aids can help.  Please get in touch by calling 01782 698090 to book a hearing test or make an enquiry.

Pie eaters
This local term for people from Wigan has nothing to do with their consumption of a local delicacy.  It dates back to the General Strike in 1926, when hunger forced local miners back to work before the strike was finished.  They were said to have eaten humble pie.

Since 1992 Wigan has held a World Pie Eating Championship as a tribute.  In 2005 the winner ate seven pies in three minutes.  However, government guidelines about Health & Safety caused a change in the rules the following year with the award going to the person who ate a pie in the shortest amount of time.  The reigning champion, Paul Gott ate his in 12.91 seconds in 2012.

Beanz means Heinz
We’ve all grown up eating baked beans.  The brand name Heinz like Hoover is almost a generic term for baked beans generally.

Although they were first produced in the United States in 1901, they very quickly gained popularity once they were introduced over here.  Fortnum and Mason was the first store to stock them also in 1901.  It was a few years later that factories in the London area were set up to produce them.  But it wasn’t until 1946 that production moved to Wigan.  Now it is the biggest food production site in Europe producing 1 billion cans of beans every year.

During the Second World War baked beans were classed as an essential food for rationing purposes.

Did you know that a lorry full of baked beans recently crashed and shed its load on the M6?  Fortunately no beans were harmed during the incident!

Interesting facts: Beecham’s Pills were first manufactured by Thomas Beecham in Wigan and Michael Marks opened a penny bazaar and warehouse in Wigan in the 19th Century and went on to found Marks & Spencer.

The Verve
The 90’s band The Verve met and formed at Winstanley Sixth Form College in Wigan.  The initial line up was Richard Ashcroft, Nick McCabe, Peter Salisbury and Simon Jones.  Simon Tong, a school friend of Richard Ashcroft, joined them later.

They were popular on the ‘indie’ scene at first, moving more mainstream with their third album, Urban Hymns and the release of the single Bitter Sweet Symphony which was a worldwide hit.  The release of a second single from the album, The Drugs Don’t Work gave them their first UK no 1 single.

The band split for the second time in 1999 and are all pursuing other career paths.

Interesting fact: Wigan is also home to Starsailor and Limahl from 1980’s band Kajagoogoo, as well as folk-rock band The Tansads.

Wigan Warriors
Wigan Warriors who play in the Super League currently hold the League Leaders Shield.  The team also holds the accolade for being one of the founding members of the Northern Rugby Football Union in 1895.

This was the breakaway group from the Rugby Football Union.  The reason was all to do with money.  The Rugby Football Union insisted that the sport kept its amateur status and would not pay the ‘broken time’ payments for players missing work.  There was a big north/south divide over the matter.  Most of the northern players were working class and could not afford to take time off work without pay.  In the south it was argued that the sport was more middle class and players could afford to take the time off without compensation.  There was also concern that there were more southern players on the board which met in London, again making it difficult for northern players to be a part of it.

Wigan Warriors were one of 20 clubs which came out in support of Huddersfield who broke away first.

The club was founded in 1872 by members of the local cricket club and are the most successful rugby league club in the UK.  They have won many accolades over the years, some of them several times, including being World Cup Champions three times.  They play at the DW Stadium which has a capacity for more than 25,000.

Wigan Pier
Wigan Pier was once just a music hall joke for a wooden jetty, where the coal was loaded onto boats on the Leeds and Liverpool Canal at Wigan.

The term Wigan Pier, which is ironic, is thought to have been coined by George Formby Senior on the Music Hall stage and continued by his son, the ukulele playing George Formby Junior.  The term certainly stuck.  Now it is the name for the area at the bottom of the Wigan locks on the canal.

Of course there was nothing glamorous about Wigan Pier with its location in the middle of an industrial town.  This is probably why author George Orwell used it for the title of his book The Road to Wigan Pier.  The book was a dark account of how Britain’s poor lived and worked in the 1930s.  Although Orwell didn’t paint a pretty picture of the area or the conditions, he is said to have liked the people.

The original wooden jetty was demolished around 1929.  It was at the end of a narrow gauge railway which ran from one of the 1,000 collieries in the area to the water’s edge.  Nowadays there are no collieries and factories on the canal banks have been converted to housing.  The canal itself is only used for pleasure boats nowadays.

Interesting fact: Other writers who commented on the town are 17th Century travel writer Celia Fiennes and Bill Bryson who also writes about travel, language and science.

Northern Soul
During the 1960s and 70s Wigan was the heart of Northern Soul or at least its ‘spiritual home’.  Wigan Casino was voted the best disco in the world by American music magazine Billboard in 1978.  Northern Soul was a music genre that originated in the north and was heavily influenced by 1960’s Motown.  Dance styles inspired by it include Disco and Break Dancing.

Interesting fact: Soft Cell’s 80’s hit Tainted Love was originally recorded by a Northern Soul artist.  Other more recent artists to have been influenced by Northern Soul include Moloko, Duffy and Plan B.

Hearing the vibe
If you can’t enjoy music as you’d like to or if listening to too much loud music at concerts is the downfall of your current state of hearing, have you considered having your ears checked?  At Castle Hearing Aids we can test and assess the state of your hearing and by using digital hearing aids, help to improve your capacity.
Don’t stay out in the cold any longer, let us help.  Get in touch today either via our online form or give us a call on 01782 698090