A QUEST to find a missing piece of Bolton’s history and bring it back home is under way with the search for town’s first lifeboat.

In 1870 the townspeople clubbed together to raise nearly £500 to buy a lifeboat for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution.

The resulting craft, named The Bolton in honour of the town, was launched the following year and based at Kessingland, Suffolk, near Lowestoft.

Plans were initially made for the 40ft boat to be brought to Bolton for its official Christening and to let the townsfolk see the object they had purchased.

But it was decided that, as the boat had been built so far away in Great Yarmouth and due to its size, it was impractical to bring it to the town and so a model was made of the craft, which was presented to the Mayor of Bolton in January 1871 instead.

The last lifeboat to bear the town’s name was decomissioned in 1925 but generous Bolton people have continued to raise money to support the work of the organisation.

Last year local people donated £30,000 and the year before, thanks to a one-off generous donation, £65,000 was raised for the RNLI.

But Tom Ridyard, chairman of the Farnworth Kearsley and Bolton branch of the RNLI cannot forget the first lifeboat which started Bolton’s connections with the organisation 140 years ago.

Mystery surrounds what happened to the model of the original “Bolton” after it was presented to the mayor.

“That’s the bit that’s missing. It just disappeared,” he said.

Mr Ridyard has managed to establish that the model ended up in a Suffolk museum before going on to RNLI headquarters in Poole, Dorset. Now he believes the model could be in the collection of a museum in Great Yarmouth, the town where the original Bolton was constructed, and he plans to travel there later this month in a bid to find the model.

“Other people have tried and failed. I have been looking for it for three or four years now and keep meeting dead ends, but I am determined it is still around,” he said. He hopes that once the model is found it can be brought back to Bolton.

“I would love to get it back into Bolton and give it a homecoming so people can see what we originally bought. It is important to get a bit of our history back.”