Stoke

[Pigmy Pony]

My neighbourhood in 1933. All the chimneys and bottle ovens you can see (except for two) are now gone, as are almost all the factory buildings.

My street is the row facing the camera, extreme bottom left. Although my actual house is off to the left just outside the shot. Apart from parked cars the street has not changed at all.

And the tarmac, don't forget the tarmac. I expect that like in Preston, Stoke council will have just tarmacced straight onto the cobbles, not knowing that one day they will have real value.

[Macca]

Do you think the streets are still cobbled in that photo? I've wondered that myself but the resolution isn't high enough to zoom in that far. Motor vehicles were pretty common by 1933 so they might have re-surfaced them by that time. Or most of them anyway.

I've checked when they have dug up the road and it does seem they did remove the cobbles before putting down the new surface except for a couple of lines of them next to the gutters which are still on view.

[struth]

doesnt look cobbled. it actually looks quite recently done.

[Pigmy Pony]

I do remember streets in Preston town centre being cobbled back on the sixties, and I'm guessing that's about when the tarmaccing started. I don't know for sure that all the cobbles are still under there, but I have on occasion seen, where the tarmac has broken up badly (as in pot holes) cobbles visible underneath.

I'm not even sure cobbles is the right name for them, maybe granite 'sets' is the correct term. There are a few streets in Preston that still have them. Much more hardwearing than tarmac, but death-on-a-stick for motorbikes in winter.

[Macca]

I remember that there were still some cobbled streets in Liverpool back in the 1970s, but not many.

Most of the alleys here still have the original cobbles and manhole covers, the covers are quite elaborate.

[Pigmy Pony]

Wellington Street in Preston. Residents are kicking off about the tarmac repairs, but I think they look spiffing, and I'll be saying so next month when I'm there fitting a new door for someone.

[Macca]

If they're anything like the tarmac repairs here they'll have disintegrated in 6 months so the residents have got nothing to worry about.

Why can't they just stick in some new cobbles anyway? It's just some stones. You can pick stone up practically anywhere, and I could lay those patches on my own in a couple of hours.

And then it's done for the next fifty years or so.

[Pigmy Pony]

Cobbles are still readily available but at massively inflated prices, due to high demand in Alderley Edge, where footballers like to have them surrounding their genuine Victorian gas streetlamps converted to run on solar.

[walpurgis]

Cobbles are

Called 'setts' in the trade. I've laid and re-laid more than my share in the past. They would generally only be used new these days for aesthetic reasons. They are very durable though.

[Pigmy Pony]

Called 'setts' in the trade. I've laid and re-laid more than my share in the past. They would generally only be used new these days for aesthetic reasons. They are very durable though.

I bet that was tough work for your back and knees. Yes I thought the word might have been setts, though I had miss-spelled it (one 't'). Are they always granite (which is what they look like)?