AERIAL PHOTO TAKEN OVER 70 YEARS AGO
East of the river on 12th July 1949.
By John Hills
East of river 1949
CLICK PICTURE FOR LARGER VIEW
The picture above is a clip from a much larger view and shows many interesting features from over 70 years ago, as practically all the fields in the centre of this picture have now been developed for industrial or commercial use.
In the top left is Denton village and its Church, the row of white houses (top right) are in Lewis Close, to the right and below Lewis Close is the new development in Kings Avenue on the northern end of the mount.
At the top centre on Mount Pleasant the black shaped blocks are the Nissen huts built during the second world war to house members of the armed forces and were mainly occupied by Canadian soldiers. When this picture was taken in 1949 they would have been occupied by local families.
At the bottom of the Mount at the far end of the Drove, we can just make out the garage, cafe and bus shelter at Denton Corner.
The long white building (with the black windows) towards the centre of the photo is part of Wheatleys scrap metal yard complex, which also contained one of the first car crushing machines installed in the country. The two brothers that ran the business Ron & Bernard Wheatley lived in the two bungalows next to the yard, both of which had beautiful flower filled front gardens.
The field just below the scrap yard was called "Fairfield" and the large circle in the field, is not where a UFO landed! but the position where the main carousel round-about would have stood when a travelling fun fair had visited, hence the fields name!
Moving down towards the bottom of the picture next to the field is the old electricity power station, which is now connected to the main electricity supply grid which terminated in the long white building to the left of the power station.
Level with "Fairfield" on the other side of The Drove, work had commenced on the foundations of the new VACCO factory, which was the start of the industrial/retail site that the area is today.
The buildings in the bottom right corner were occupied by the Parker Pen company, just before the major expansion of the site that commenced in 1951, which included a larger factory area and new office block complex.
Text in blue link to detailed/enlarged clips from the picture.