Fire destroys old stables at the old Birtenshaw School, off Darwen Road, Bromley Cross

Firefighters were called to the building off Darwen Road, in Bromley Cross at around 3.15pm on Saturday.

The now-derelict barn was part of the buildings attached to the old Birtenshaw Hall School.

Three fire engines from Bolton North responded to the incident and firefighters also blaze and used an aerial appliance to tackle the blaze.

Watch manager Ian Tattersall, from Bolton North fire station, said the fire was believed to have been started deliberately.

He said: “It is now a dangerous building and building inspectors have now visited the site. I believe it to have been deliberate, but by persons unknown.”

He added that the barn was ‘well alight’ by the time crews arrived and the heat generated by the fire, as well as the warm weather, made the job a particularly difficult one.

He said: “It was an arduous job for us because of the heat and the hot weather. The fire was difficult to get to, which was why we had to use the aerial appliance.

He continued: “With it being derelict I couldn’t put people in there, so we had to fight it from outside.”

Crews tackled the fire for nearly five hours, finishing the job at around 8pm.”

The barn was the only one of the hall’s outbuilding still standing which can be found on historic Ordnance Survey maps.

The former Birtenshaw Hall School was built as a private house and was occupied by

successive generations of the Ashworth family from 1740 to 1954. The core of the existing building dates to a rebuilding in 1864 under the direction of George Binns Ashworth

From 1955, the building was in use as a residential school and was altered and extended for this use s during the second half of the 20th century. The school vacated the premises in 2014, after a new purpose-built building was built on the adjacent site.

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