25 YEARS AGO rom the Evening News, uly 14, 1976

RESIDENTS of Church Road, Prestwich, are "furious" over the felling of more than 20 trees on a demolition site next to their parish church.

A speedy preservation order to save the 100-years-old trees on the Irwell Bank Mills site, made by Bolton Council, was just to late to save them.

FAMILY vaults in the churchyard at lonely Rivington Chapel have been forced open, headstones have been smashed and a cross pushed over. Police have not ruled out witchcraft, but think vandalism is the more likely cause.

50 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News,

July 14, 1951

A GHOST train came to Bolton this week. It pulled out of the Crescent-rd. sidings one night when the town was asleep. Its journeys are not marked on any public timetable, it stops at no stations, and it carries no passengers. It has quite a reputation as a killer.

The train has started its annual job in the area of spraying the tracks with a weed-killing chemical solution. If the weeds were not checked they would do a great deal of damage to the tracks. They would eventually throw the rails out of alignment. The ghost train, therefore, plays an important part in keeping the wagons rolling.

125 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News,

July 16, 1876

ON Saturday afternoon, the memorial stone of the new Primitive Methodist Chapel and School, Moor-lane, was laid by James Barlow, Esq., JP, of Greenthorne, Edgworth, in the presence of a large number of spectators. The building will be an extension of the old chapel and school which were to a great extent destroyed by fire on the 7th January in the present year.

ON Saturday evening, the opening of the new building erected by the Methodist New Connexion body at Brownlow-fold, which is to be used as a school and chapel, was celebrated by a tea party, at which over 150 attended.