IT was with a heavy heart that Ridgway Bowling Club secretary Phil Cooper called time on its near 130-year history.

The paperwork is yet to be completed but the once-thriving Blackrod club, which is connected to Rivington Bar and Grill, formerly the Ridgway Arms, in Station Road, has pulled out of the Adlington League and disbanded.

Mr Cooper, aged 75, blamed falling numbers for the decision, with the club’s eight members now fewer than the 10 they need to field a team.

He also said the ageing players were struggling to maintain the green, which they have been doing since the attached pub’s former brewers Greenhalls stopped doing it in 1998.

“The sad truth is that younger people are not taking up crown green bowls anymore and those who are left are all dying away,” said Mr Cooper, who first joined the club in 1966.

“If we could get some younger members who are prepared to help put some work into the green then we would love to keep it going.

“But the current membership are all in their 70s and 80s. Every year it gets harder and harder for us to play.

“I don’t know what is going to happen to the green. It is a shame, but these things happen, it is just a sign of the times.”

Sadly, the closure of the club, which started in 1887 and boasted around 50 members until numbers began to fall over the last decade, is part of a growing trend in the area.

According to Mr Cooper, it is the 12th bowling green in Blackrod, Horwich and Adlington to close over the past five years, with only five now remaining in the area.

Several of those, such as the greens at D Havilland and the former Waterworks in Rivington, were lost when the businesses, while most had to call time after the pubs they were attached to shut down.

Keith Andrews, secretary of the Lancashire Crown Green Bowling Association, has seen seven of the county's affiliated clubs disband over the past 12 months, with increased pressures on the public purse also having an impact.

“I am afraid it is an all too familiar story,” he said.

“The problem is that when the bowling greens go the clubs tend to go with them and we are also seeing councils closing greens now, so it is a worrying trend.”