THIS week is Local History Week and people in towns and villages up and down the country have been busy digging up the past. Even top soap Coronation Street is featuring a storyline in which characters re-enact a famous Civil War battle. Frank Elson looks at why it is important people continue to delve into yesteryear

WHY is your house built where it is? Why is your street named what it is? Why is that strange road junction like it is?

Just a few of the questions that a little knowledge of the local history of your area might help to uncover.

There are four local history groups listed in the Bolton Evening News Community Guide and many others, such as "Old Boys" clubs, who spend a lot of the time looking back.

The Bolton Evening News, for obvious reasons, is dedicated to telling readers what is happening today, but also publishes the immensely popular Looking Back page, written by Les Gent.

The page attracts one of the biggest postbags of any feature of the newspaper.

An occasional series -- Worktown Memories, Unsolved Murders -- has been equally popular.

Local history is about the town and the area in which you live. It has a fascination way beyond that of dates of kings and queens, who had only a tiny effect on what we are doing today.

Local History is also something that you can look up for yourself. In the reference room of your local library and in the parish records you will find your own history and that of your neighbours and friends.

And if, like me, you are not from the area, it can give you a feeling of belonging.

Above all, local history is fascinating. You find out facts about places -- and even people -- that you know, or recognise, and you often get a closer and more intimate view of the past than you would through a knowledge of national or international historical facts.

Of course local history can go back just as far as you want to take it yourself -- to the Romans or the Stone Age -- or it can go back just a few years.

All history is a matter of perception really. To a 20-year-old the Vietnam War is history, but a 50-year-old watched it unfold each evening on the television news.

So, too, with local history, depending on your age you may be able to find out facts by talking to someone who was there.

Local history appears, in most cases, to be a form of entertainment. To bring the past of the area in which you live back to life. However, there can be a serious and useful side.

More than one developer or local authority that has tried to build -- or knock down -- something against the wishes of the locals has been thwarted by the discovery of an old charter or contract by a local historian.

Barry Parker is the press and publicity officer of the Halliwell Local History Society, which has 70 members.

"A chap I knew very well used to say to me that the past is also our future," said Mr Parker. "Everything that has been done in the past affects the future and it is only knowing about the past that helps us avoid the mistakes, learn by them, or even repeat some of the successes."

Mr Parker agreed that the research itself can also be fun. He said: "Getting involved in dusty records and looking through old photographs can be as much fun as the end result."

Schoolchildren and students have cause to thank people like Mr Parker as well.

He said: "There is not enough local history taught these days, but many youngsters start off doing projects on their local area and end up coming to us."

"The history of where you live fascinates people of all ages."

Mr Parker is one of those historians who "lives" the history he researches.

He added: "I held an old Roman coin in my hand the other week and I could almost feel myself back there. I wondered about how many people had held that coin, who they were. It has been there long before I had been thought of and it will be there long after I've gone. Who can fail to be fascinated by that?"

Useful numbers

Farnworth & District - Mr K. Beevers, Library, Market Street, Farnworth. Tel: 332344.

Halliwell - Mr Barry Parker. Tel: 491966.

Turton - Mr J F Horridge. 133 Hardy Mill Road, Harwood. Tel: 533561.

Local History Workshop, Westhoughton Library. Tel: 01942 634640.

Or try the noticeboard of your local Library, Bolton Central Library, or Bolton Museum.