Subject: Oldham C. T. tram
Location: Star Inn, Oldham
Date: mid-1920s

The tram may well be 39 again as seen earlier in the gallery, as it is apparently identical (there were many detail variations) and is working the same 4 circular route and it is quite likely the photographer would have taken both pictures on the same day.

Of particular transport interest is the wiring for Oldham’s short-lived trolleybus service which only ran from 26-Aug-1925 to 4-Sep-1926. This looped round the theatre and terminated in Chaucer Street.

The theatre was, at the time, the Grand Theatre and Opera House and had opened in 1908. It closed as a theatre in 1936 and re-opened the following year as the Gaumont cinema. It only lasted as a cinema until 1961 and served in many entertainment roles after that, the most notable event probably being a concert by the Beatles in 1963.

Photograph from the David Beilby collection