An historic Bolton bar and restaurant is expanding its premises to include a function room despite the difficulties of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Little Bolton Town Hall in St George’s Street, Bolton, which houses Courtyard 36 bar and restaurant as well as business and office space, was brought back to life in 2019 by Rebecca and Chris Brayshaw.

The couple from Bolton spent two years from 2017 — and more than £500,000 — turning Little Bolton Town Hall and its adjacent building into offices, a café bar and meeting and event spaces with this function room another expansion to the historic building.

This new application hopes to turn the first floor into a function space to complete the transformation. he couple also hope to create another 10 jobs.

Rebecca said the ultimate goal for this new space, combined with the rest of the building, is to create a wedding venue which takes advantage of the stunning interior.

She said: “It’s always been the plan to make this room into a function room and has been part of the four-stage process of the office, bar, conference and event space.

“This is the final stage to complete our transformation of the building, we hoped to have it done last year but coronavirus delayed the plans.

“There’s such great architecture inside from it having been a magistrates court building and a beautiful sweeping staircase which is just crying out for a bride or groom to be on it.

“A lot of people haven’t seen the upstairs yet so it will be great to have the whole building open for everyone to see and use for a variety of occasions and events ­— people are blown away when they see it.

“This will mean we can finally finish off our projects and have the whole building as one.

“We are really excited to have everything finished after four years of working really hard and investing a lot in the processes.

"It’s been very piecemeal so far but we are looking forward to being able to go ahead with it finally.”

Rebecca also confirmed Little Bolton Town Hall will not be opening on April 12, when bars and restaurants are allowed to open their outside areas for service, and instead will be waiting until May 17 when indoor hospitality is allowed.