From the Evening News, September 7, 1992 - LEGAL moves were underway today to clear 500 New Age travellers from moorland around Bolton.

And legal action was also starting to force out more than 30 caravan families camped on the former Edbro works site off Thynne Street, near Bolton town centre. Police set up road blocks and began a weekend-long cat and mouse game with droves of New Age travellers after a convoy of 150 trucks, wagons, buses and cars rolled on to moorland at Pickup Bank, between Broadhead and Darwen. About 20 vehicles were sent back through Holcombe Brook and Tottington, and ended up on Ousel Nest car park, part of the Jumbles Country Park.

25 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News,

September 7, 1977

A BOLTON legend lay shattered in three pieces today after vandals struck one of the famous ornamental elephants in Chorley Street. Efforts, however, are to be made to repair the elephant, one of a pair mounted in 1863. The massive elephants, moulded in cast iron, have become a landmark at the entrance to Kay Timber Components which now occupies the buildings of a former bleachworks. According to local legend, the elephants were fed and changed gateposts every New Year's Eve.

50 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News,

September 6, 1952

FROM the roof of Bolton Town Hall one day this week, writes an Evening News reporter, I had a fairly clear view of the town. It was during Bolton September holiday, and though the smoke from countless small home fires blew over the roof tops, 200 mill chimneys lifted their ugly heads into the sky and emitted not one wisp of smoke. Oh, to have a smokeless town!

100 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News,

September 7, 1902

A SHOCKING trap fatality occurred at Edgworth shortly after eight o'clock last night, as the result of which a butcher, named Thomas Whitehead (22), residing at East View, Edgworth, was killed, and his companion Ambrose Howarth, Longworth Bank, very seriously injured.

How the accident happened is at present a mystery, and from the information which is obtainable is can only be presumed that the horse either became restive and took fright, or the vehicle came into collision with something. The place where the accident occurred is a steep declivity known as Wayoh Brow, and here the trap was found turned upside down, and both Whitehead and Howarth were lying in the roadway.