AT THE AGE of 81, Bill Calderbank can safely lay claim to the title of Bolton's oldest grave digger.

And after 21 years at St Mary's Deane Church cemetery, the octogenarian still carries out gruelling work with which some men half his age would struggle.

As one of the town's hardest-working elderly people, Mr Calderbank arrives at the Junction Road church each morning before 7am to tend to graves and the garden of remembrance.

And when a funeral booking comes in, the former iron-moulder sets about his craft, digging rarely found coffin-shaped graves by hand - with no help from mechanical diggers.

But this is all set to change when Mr Calderbank, whose Junction Road home backs on to the church grounds, retires at the end of the month after a career spanning two decades and hundreds of neatly dug graves.

The cemetery is the largest in Lancashire and church staff say Mr Calderbank knows the grounds "like the back of his hand".

The number of graves he digs varies each month, but he says the secret to longevity in the job has been simply "keeping busy".

Mr Calderbank said: "Not many people use a spade, but for me there's nothing else. We do not have a digger, but they just create a great big hole and that's it. I make a proper shape for the coffin, which tapers at the feet.

"It is easy when you are working outside in the sun - my favourite part of the job."

Mr Calderbank, who has a 41-year-old son, says he will be kept busy in his retirement by wife, Betty, who will retire from her position as verger at the church in August.

He said: "She will definitely find me jobs to do around the house, so I suppose I will be just as busy."

Julie Cooper, administrator at the church, said: "Bill will be sorely missed. There is no-one who knows the grounds like him and he does so much for us.

"He can direct us to any plot on the site immediately. I don't know what we will do without him."

Mr Calderbank says he will miss life at the church, but with the building on his doorstep, he will never be far away.