BULLDOZERS have begun razing an historic community hub to the ground.

The Rose Centre is being knocked down to make way for a 36-home development just days after another landmark building in Lowton was demolished.

St Catherine of Siena Church has been flattened but its remembrance garden and burial ground will remain on Newton Road.

It is not known what the plans are for the land on which the church stood.

Ed Thwaite, chairman of the Lowton East Neighbourhood Development Forum (LENDF), said: "It is sad that the church has gone.

"It was an interesting building which some people liked and some didn't like, but it was certainly a landmark one."

Formerly known as Lowton Civic Hall, The Rose Centre is owned by Rose Leisure, which bought it from Wigan Council.

The council approved an application from MCI Developments for the site on Hesketh Meadow Lane to be turned into a housing development after no bids were made to run the building, which was a hostel for Eastern Europeans working in the coal mines in the late 1940s, as an asset of community value.

Ed added: "The civic hall served us for many years and there were lots of good functions there, so it is a shame what has happened to it."

The building is steeped in history.

The farmland on Hesketh Meadow Lane was requisitioned by the War Department in 1939.

It was set to become a village with its own chapel, cinema and sick bay to accommodate 600 workers at the munitions factory at Risley Moss.

However in 1942 the plans were changed and it was converted into a land-based ship, known as HMS Cabbala.

A HMS Cabbala plaque at the site has been preserved.

The Royal Navy signals training centre attracted recruits from across the country to be trained in top secret methods of sending and receiving codes, especially Morse code.

Around 600 sailors and 60 Wrens boarded the ship until 1946.