FORMER Metropolitan Police mounted policeman Keith Webb has, with wife June, written the latest booklet in Neil Parkhouse's A Glance Back at ... series. Coleford (£4.50) is a compilation of old postcards and other photos displaying scenes from the turn of the last century to its 1960s town centre replanning.
An early photo shows the octagonal church in Market Square before its demolition in 1882. St John's which replaced it was originally designed with a spire as shown in an 1870s sketch, but the money ran out before it could be built.
The Market Hall in front of the Angel Hotel, demolished in 1968, features in several perspectives of the square. Only survivor of the two railway lines and stations, today the site of the Pyart Court shopping centre, is the Goods Shed museum.
In their Introduction and captions the authors record the closure of the Monmouth line as early as 1917, and the end of passenger services on the Lydney line in 1929. The latter continued to carry stone from the Whitecliff quarry until the 1980s, when its track was taken up and its Cinderhill cutting was levelled to make way for district council offices, fire and ambulance stations, and health centre.
Private cars being a rarity until post-WWII years, the town was well provided with hotels for commercial travellers. Two temperance hotels (one owned by the St John's Street Wine Vaults proprietor) operated on the west side of the High Street – one now a district council annexe, the other an estate agent's.
Shops which survive include Bolter's hairdressers and tobacconist's (founded 1918), F.N. Jones's photographic shop in Gloucester Road, and White's butchers. Buildings which have gone include the fine police station and adjacent home of Angus Buchanan VC to make way for the new police station and magistrates' court, as well as other handsome Lords Hill residences.