Readers young and old have solved the mystery of which shops lie underneath Keighley’s new market canopy.

Teenage historian Lewis Parker and Long Lee septagenarian Granville Armstrong have made suggestions.

The canopy is being built over the concourse at the market entrance near Marks & Spencer.

Contractors digging foundations last month found the cellars of old buildings under the concourse.

Construction was delayed and the market entrance closed, while workmen filled in the cellars.

News of the old shops — demolished before the covered market was built in 1971 — was revealed in the Keighley News last week.

Lewis Parker, 13, who runs a Keighley history website, sent the Keighley News several old photographs.

Taken between 1962 and 1969, they show the original row of shops on Low Street.

They reveal that the shops on the concourse area were a Co-operative provision store and men’s tailor John Collier.

Immediately above them were the Timothy White’s shop, on the approximate site of the present Greggs bakery and Halifax Bank.

Immediately below were another Timothy White’s store — now an amusement arcade — and Lipton’s.

Further up Low Street can be seen the Black Horse pub, which was gutted by fire in 1990 and now houses clothes shop Ethel Austin.

Mr Armstrong, from Long Lee, drew a map showing the layout of Low Street shops in the early 1950s.

He worked at Lipton’s before joining the army in 1953, while lifelong friend Brian Newiss, of Riddlesden, worked at the Co-operative.

The pair said there was also an alleyway on the current site of the market entrance, alongside what is now the amusement arcade.

In the 1950s this led to a cinema behind the Low Street shops, the Cosy Corner, on the site of the current covered market.