AFTER stirring up reminiscences of old-time horse-and-cart traders, prompted by recent glimpses here of the fish man who served folk 70-odd years ago in Blackburn's long-gone Fisher Street and of Bogganio's ice cream business based there, Looking Back is asked not to overlook another of the area's fondly-remembered roundsmen.
He was shopkeeper Joseph Mescki who had a mixed business in the 1930s in Mount Pleasant near Holy Trinity Church -- but is remembered still for the pony and trap from which he sold home-made ice cream in many parts of Blackburn.
An 82-year-old reader who, as a girl, lived nearby in now-virtually-vanished Moor Street says: "The shop had an out-house where the ice cream was made and the blocks of ice that were put round the tubs that it was made in used to be delivered along Ellershaw Court, which was a short street of 13 houses off Mount Pleasant."
Midway between Moor Street and Trinity Street, which is now much changed from this 1960 picture of it (inset left), Mount Pleasant ended at the Unicorn Inn -- the Dutton's pub seen isolated in this 1965 view (main) of Larkhill flats and demolition on what was to become the site of Larkhill Health Centre.
But one of Mount Pleasant's buildings -- the three-storey hostel, seen (inset right), with manager Ernest Pollard leaving it for the last time -- almost demolished itself two years earlier.
Its 18 residents were given just one hour to get out at the end of January, 1963, when council officials found that the premises were in danger of collapsing at any time -- after vibration from demolition of other properties in the area caused serious damage to its gable end.
The building was itself pulled down a few days after it was evacuated.
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