Oh yes, there was a Hollywood in Bolton! It wasn't anything to do with the cinema, but a house on Chorley New Road, which is now better known (after conversion and extensions) as the Beaumont Hospital.

The subject has been brought up by Mr Jim Kellett, of Tonge Park Avenue, Bolton, who until his retirement was in the building trade, and is interested in old local buildings, many which have now been demolished.

He has done some research into Hollywood, and found in the Library a directory going back as 1860 which lists the house "but I would think its history goes much further back than that.'

Well in fact, Mr Kellett, it doesn't. In an article in the Evening News in 1978, when its last resident, Mrs Helen Agnes Taylor, died at the age of 96, the story included the fact that the house was 118 years old. That means it was built in 1860, and according to a book called 'The Annals of Bolton' it is recorded that in January, 1884, 'Mr Thomas Gidlow, of Hollywood, aged 66, formerly an extensive coal proprietor, a staunch Churchman and a Conservative' died.

It is thought that the house was built by Mr Gidlow. However, Mrs Taylor's son, Mr Harwood Taylor, who now lives on Markland Hill, Bolton, tells me that his grandfather, W.H. Higgin (who had a kiln making clay pipes quite near to Doffcocker) took over the house, he thinks in the 1818s.

The family lived there until 1978, Mrs Taylor (who was a Higgins before her marriage) on her own, but in great style, for 30 years after the death of her husband, Edgar Mason Taylor, who was in cotton spinning with the firm of Holdsworth Bros. of Blackburn Road, a firm which - let's be honest, as with most similar companies - is now closed.

Incidentally, Hollywood was set in 12 acres of rolling gardens, and apart from being turned into a private hospital, housing has been erected on much of the land, particularly that leading down to Chorley New Road.

I hope, Mr Kellett, that this has helped answer your query.

But the last word to Mr Kellett, with which I am sure most of us would agree (I do, anyway, so I'm not bothered whether the rest of you do or not!): 'Some of the buildings knocked down in my lifetime in Bolton, and the history connected with them, the filling in of the canal, etc., is nothing short of criminal because these places were Bolton's heritage.'

And as time goes on, more and more of them are disappearing, with the owners selling large gardens to be replaced with what seem to be large estates of smaller houses. Whether that is good or bad, only time will tell, but I have my own thoughts on the matter . . .