THERE has never been a better time to explore Bolton and find out about its fascinating past.

With lockdown, more people are discovering more about their town and its hidden treasures while enjoying the countryside and surrounding areas. Now to make the walks even more interesting, Bolton-based arts and heritage organisation, Live from Worktown is launching a free online series of historically themed guided walks.

Over the past four years, local historian, Dave Burnham has led walks on Bill Naughton’s life, the Saints and Sinners of Bolton town centre and Victorian Murders.

While researching his latest walk, the pandemic struck and a guided walk with regular stops for explanations would be a breach of social distancing rules. So instead Worktown Walks team set about producing downloadable directions and commentary instead.

The first audio walk, Cotton, Culture and Characters concentrates on Bolton’s early pre-eminence in the cotton industry, particularly Samuel Crompton and the Ashworth family. But it also takes in Nat Lofthouse’s disputed goal in the 1958 Cup Final, a Battle of Britain fighter pilot and the smallest cinema in town amongst much else on its 21 stops.

Despite its suburban setting in Tonge Moor, Sharples and Eagley, this walk is mostly through wooded countryside.

Dave said: “I hope people will find the stories fascinating while they enjoy Bolton’s countryside and history, getting the exercise we all need for both our hearts and our heads during this difficult time.”

The Worktown Walks team also includes Brad B. Wood who voices the walk looks after the technical side, Peter Firth and Dave Bryce who trial the walks.Peter also provides the music which bookends this first walk.

More walks are in the offing, all woven around specific, local themes, as well as introductions to places that even locals may never have known about.

The team has nearly completed the second walk, Edwardian Bolton: Drinkers, Swindlers, Hangmen and Suffragettes, and Dave is now researching the third walk, Turton, the Barlows and the beginnings of Football.

Cotton, Culture and Characters can be downloaded at livefromworktown.bandcamp.com, where there is a map, directions and audio commentary.

Live from Worktown is a Bolton-based voluntary arts and heritage organisation which has organised poetry festivals and anthologies, jazz events, cultural cabaret live nights, a lottery-funded season of arts, heritage and education events about Bill Naughton, and who are currently preparing a writing festival, Threads, for 2021. For more information visit livefromworktown.org or its Facebook page.