WE have just returned from a coach trip to Shrewsbury—we just had to get away from Bolton.

On the bus trip was Cllr Walter Hall. Shrewsbury is a bustling town, alive and full of old buildings.

What did Cllr Hall think, truthfully? There is not the poverty and desolation there that we have here in Bolton.

Returning on the bus past countless “bomb sites” is so upsetting. We talked to people in Shrewsbury and told them we thought Bolton was a dump. Only when you travel do you realise how bad it is.

While on the trip I wrote down all the known “bomb sites” in the town centre alone and it makes devastating reading: ● Land behind the Little Theatre/St Paul’s Church; ● Land between the old Odeon to where Hick Hargreaves and the Water Place was; ● Land where Gregory and Porritts was in Great Moor Street; ● Land soon to be where the college was, facing the corner of Bridgeman Street; ● Waste land behind Victoria Hall and to Marsden Road; ● The soon to be empty site where the bus station is situated; ● Land where Clarence Street School was; ● Blocks of land where Breightmet Street and Bridgeman Street run; ● The old Shaws Funeral Services site on St George’s Road and facing near the Salvation Army.

On a map at home I have coloured all car parks and cleared land in black, derelict buildings like Trinity Church in red and all the “to let” vacant shops in yellow and I think a good 70 per cent of Bolton is not working.

This town wants to be a city, but it needs to be a town again first.

S Corns Almond Street Bolton