Stuart Whittle, chairman of Horwich Heritage, reflects on a special year

IF things had been going normally, last week would have seen the annual meeting and we would be celebrating 35 years of Horwich Heritage with a special exhibition.

We were able to conduct the AGM online but the exhibition will have to wait until we can mingle more freely at the Heritage Centre.

In the meantime, we have plenty of material in our archives to remind ourselves of how far we have come in those 35 years.

The group was formed to re-establish a sense of pride in the local community following the closure of Horwich Loco works at the end of 1983.

We quickly gathered a strong membership of 150 and embarked on a programme of speakers and events that have continued to the present day.

Our first big ‘breakthrough’ came with the opening of Horwich Resource Centre in 1991 which provided a venue for our meetings and gift fairs and also offered us a small room to put on our displays.

Having developed our exhibition skills over the following 15 years, we were able to persuade Horwich Town Council to let us have occupation of the refurbished ‘phase 2’ area (the former rifle range) and turn it into a Heritage Centre - which opened in March 2006.

To have a Heritage Centre to celebrate all that is great about the history of Horwich was always our dream,

And I am pleased to say we are still living that dream 14 years later - thanks to the dedication of the committee, volunteers and members and continued support of HTC.

Over the years we have had hundreds of speakers, put on more than 100 different exhibitions, run lots of trips and events and produced a number of our own films and publications - and it is always worth reminding ourselves how much has been achieved in the past 35 years.