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A Town that has Stood Still as the World has Moved On
James Bloodworth returns to Wigan after a decade, en route to Ashton-in-Makerfield, to explore whether Orwell’s sense of the area’s ‘decay’ still rings true
Ninety years ago, George Orwell travelled from London to Wigan to report on unemployment in the area. Perhaps the most famous scene from the resulting book featured a filthy tripe shop owned by the Brookers and situated on Darlington Road. After describing the filth, smells, and atmosphere of the lodging house, Orwell decided he had had enough.
“On the day there was a full chamber-pot under the breakfast table I decided to leave,” he wrote in The Road to Wigan Pier.
When I first came to Wigan 10 years ago, researching my own book, I made a pilgrimage to the site of the tripe shop where Orwell lodged in 1936. It was there that he encountered what he called a feeling of “stagnant meaningless decay”.
