North Street in 1900

The passing years are reflected in the changing street scenes of our town centres and this is what North Street looked like a century ago with the market place beyond, a notable absence of motorised transport and quaint Dickensian shop fronts, although some of the buildings are still familiar today.
The unhurried pace of life is evident from the delivery barrows awaiting loading at the kerbside ready to be pushed to their destination with newly-bought goods while the first signs of the modern age are emerging with telegraph poles carrying phone wires along the street, the new form of communication having reached the town in 1878 and although few homes had a telephone, most businesses were by now connected.