A popular ‘farmhouse pub’ which has served its community for around 60 years is at risk of closure after plans emerged to turn it into a children’s nursery. The Cotton Tree Hotel, which has served punters in the School Hill area of ​​Bolton since the mid-1960s, is the subject of a planning application lodged by The Nest Therapy Ltd last week. for the conversion of the pub building into a kindergarten with a perimeter. fence.
The building, north of Bolton town centre, is still running but its owners have been selling it on property websites for around £295,000 in recent months. Boozer Prince Street has an attached conference room that has hosted countless wedding receptions, funeral wakes and other celebrations over the decades.
A recent post on a Bolton-focused nostalgia Facebook group about the pub gathered dozens of fond memories of the Cotton Tree. Those who posted their thoughts described fond memories of country and western nights, rock shows and karaoke nights.
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Some reminisced about their wedding receptions being held upstairs, many from the pub’s ‘heyday’ in the 1970s. In the 1980s, the Bolton Pipe Band practiced upstairs, thirsty pipers then retired for ale and those who worked at the nearby Wallis and Hartley Mill went there on Friday afternoons to put a hole in their pay packets.
To this day, the pub welcomes scores of veterans to call in for a pint or two and swap stories after the parade to mark the town’s commemoration on Armistice Day, and the pub’s clientele and management proudly support several different charities.
With several estate pubs closing every month, as people’s social habits change, Local Democracy Reporting Service visited the Cotton Tree early Wednesday evening to ask customers what it would mean to lose the area’s only pub.
It would be fair to say that the unassuming Cotton Tree has seen better days. The exterior of the building looks a bit run down, but this is more than made up for by the warm welcome inside.
The neat and tidy main lounge holds a healthy crowd, around 20, and the atmosphere is cheerful and humorous with the clatter of pool balls punctuating laughter and conversation. After paying the princely sum of £3.60 for a pint of premium lager, pub regulars are only too happy to tell me what the place means to them.
Dave Williams, who lives in School Hill, has been a regular since he moved to the area eight years ago. “I call in a few times a week after work for a pint or two,” he said.
“It’s a friendly place and most people know each other. This pub welcomes strangers, welcomes everyone. “If someone came in for the first time, went out and left their phone on the table for four hours, no one would touch it.
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We look out for each other. “If the pub closes, I don’t know what I’ll do – I’ll probably stay in the house more.” Frank, 70, lives nearby and has been a Cotton Tree regular for 43 years.
He said: “I would be upset if this place closed, it’s a big part of my life, it’s my social life. “The people here are all my friends and if it closes it would be like losing contact with my family members.” “I know I wouldn’t see most of them again.
Janice Slater, 54, and her partner James Stewart, 57, travel to Cotton Tree from their home in Kearsley, about four miles away. Janice said: “There is a sense of community here and we care about each other. Everyone has problems and here you can talk to someone about it and laugh. Hearing about the plans for the building upset me.”
James said: “It’s the focal point of this whole borough, a place that still brings people together. I had a 50th birthday party there and there were so many parties, weddings and parties that people came together and had a good time.
“Once pubs like that are gone, they’re gone forever.” If it goes, it will be a big, big loss for hundreds of people.”
Man still in oil-stained work clothes. “I travel miles from where I live in Breightmet to get here. I’m doing it because it’s the right pub, the right local, and soon there won’t be any left.’
Planners at Bolton Council will decide on the change of use planning application at a date to be decided.