IT was once a familiar sight in Harwood. Rolling fields of buttercups, working farms and abundant wildlife.

Now, only one farm remains as sprawling housing estates grow ever bigger and its shopping centre becomes larger.

But to local bachelor Arnold Davenport, life remains as unaltered as the day when he first walked into Nab Gate Farm, Stitch-mi-Lane, Harwood, nearly 50 years ago looking for a job.

Since then, nothing has changed in his life.

He continues to get up at dawn. He tends his fields and animals, come rain or shine, without a care for the pressures and trials of the modern world.

He has never even set foot inside the nearby supermarket.

But on June 18, the easy going bachelor faces the prospect of not only losing his home, but his whole way of life.

Bailiffs, who visited the farm this week, handed him the eviction notice. The land owners want to sell the farm to allow the nearby golf club to expand.

He says he will spend what could be his last few days tending his lambs, hens and sheep in the farm which remains unchanged since being built in the glory days of British small holdings.

Mr Davenport has never had a holiday, or slept even a single night away from his home in half a century.

He boasts about keeping "the cleanest farm in the land" and knows every blade of grass, every swallow, barn owl and every hedgerow (which he planted by hand more than 30 years ago).

He claims the Stitch-mi-Lane plot has historical relevance to Bolton as Samuel Crompton's former home in Hall i'th Wood. Buttercup fields surround the organic farm and he fears for the welfare of the many swallows which migrate from foreign climes to live in his barn; the nesting owls, rare species of newt and other wildlife which live unchecked on 'his' farm.

Mr Davenport was due to leave the farm on May 12. He barricaded himself in, waiting for the bailiffs to arrive, but they failed to show up.

The long fight with local farm owner Chris Holt continues with a further court battle expected.

Mr Holt refuses to comment on the eviction issue except to add that court proceedings are now imminent.

Mr Davenport, aged 57, has pledged no court order will make him leave.

His home is like stepping back in time. The cobbled courtyard echoes the noise of the old shire horses which used to be housed in the magnificent stables which still receive daily tender loving care.

The farmer admits that he will find it difficult to see a future away from the farm. "I will be heartbroken. I have no idea what I will do," he said.

He first went to Nab Gate when he was just 13 years old and a promising athlete.

William Dawson, the main leaseholder since 1911, died in 1996 but Mr Davenport remained as a tenant farmer.

A petition, signed by 300 residents who have been his neighbours for more than 50 years, is to be handed to local Labour MP David Crausby. The tenant farmer still refuses to make preparations to leave the historic farm -- Harwood's last remaining working farm.

The farmer can be seen tending his sheep, apparently more concerned with the task of lambing than with problems of where he is to live. Mr Davenport said: "I've been up all night lambing, that's more important at the moment. Were can I go after all this time? I'll just take to the roofs."

Picture: The changing face of Harwood. In 1865, Harwood had a population of around 2,000 and was mainly rural in character with about 35 farmsteads and 400 cottages.

Today, tens of thousands of people have set up home in Harwood with former farms now expensive mews-style homes and fields turned into modern day housing estates, schools and shopping centres.