DEMOLITION workers bulldozed through Bolton's history when they uncovered papers dating back more than 100 years.

A team from Clitheroe-based Mark A Taylor Demolition has saved boxes full of mill blueprints and auction catalogues from the skip. They have donated their finds to Bolton Museum.

The papers, dated around 1900 to 1940, provide a snapshot of the town's cotton and textile industry at the turn of the Twentieth Century.

Workmen found them in storage as they demolished the former premises of engineering company, Thomas Mitchell and Sons, in Edgar Street, in Bolton town centre.

Demolition worker, Aiden Smithson, said: "We were clearing out all the old paperwork from the site, about two weeks ago, when we found boxes that no-one had realised were there.

"We just thought it was too valuable to the region's heritage to throw on the skip."

An officer from Bolton Museum this week visited the site to inspect the findings. She took 20 documents, mostly auction catalogues from the sale of cotton mills.

There are ten documents covering Bolton mills and another ten concerning mills across Lancashire.

The artefacts could end up being housed at the Bolton Council-run museum, in Le Mans Crescent.

A Bolton Council spokesman said: "At the moment we're examining and evaluating them. They could be maintained in the reference section as part of the town's industrial heritage."