ALAN WHALLEY'S WORLD

AN amazing pictorial coincidence popped up in my old mailbag this week.

Having spotted a pre-war snapshot, taken by a street photographer and featuring shoppers in St Helens town centre, Harold Nevitt dug into his family album. And, hey presto, he came up with a photo taken at exactly the same spot - but this time featuring himself, during short-pants days, hand-in-hand with his dear old mum.

And Harold, who will be 75 in a couple of month's time, was thus able to solve a puzzle featured on this page (March 27).

Former Rugby League ace Alf Arnold of Eccleston, who provided the original look-alike street scene (showing his granny in the foreground) had wondered where the exact location was; and he was curious as to whether any reader could name the bygone pub in the foreground.

Now, Harold, from Allan Road, Haresfinch, says: "The pub, shown on both photos was the old White Lion on Church Street. Just further up was the Broadway Cafe, where my mother occasionally took me for a cuppa and a cake."

The pub, he reveals, later became the site of Marks & Spencer and the adjoining Woolworths.

Those sepia snapshots, believes Harold, were taken by a street photographer who used to patrol the town centre, tripod on his shoulder, ready to snap passers-by in the hope of selling a few re-prints.

As with Alf's, the tiny snap forwarded by Harold was a proof from which to order full- sized pictures.

Harold, who began life as an errand boy but retired after 36 years as a turner at Bold Colliery, believes that his treasured snapshot was taken around 1930, when he'd be about seven or eight. Which nicely ties in with the 'date guesswork' of Alf Arnold who had been intrigued by a Saints v Leeds poster shown on the old pub frontage.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.