THE former Lostock Open Air School is due to be bulldozed in the next few months.

The final chapter will be written in the history of a school dating back 130 years when a planning application to build homes is approved.

The plans by Warrington-based developer Countryside (Residential) (NW) Ltd to construct nine luxury houses on the site of the former school on Tempest Lane in Lostock are set to be given the go-ahead by Bolton Council.

The Secretary of State for the Environment, John Prescott, granted outline planning permission for houses in January this year.

The council then sold the school and the land around for £1million to Countryside.

Protesters had launched a campaign to save the Victorian school when plans to bulldoze it were first mooted by the council three years ago.

They collected 200 letters of objection.

The protesters claimed a partial victory after restricting the extent of the planned development but failed to save the school.

Signs have been put up in the past few weeks warning people to stay away because the buildings have become unstable and dangerous.

Tempest Road resident Margaret Edge said: "We thought it could have been turned into something rather than be knocked down. But it is now declared unsafe so I don't see there is anything else we can do."

She added that the residents of Lostock were now concentrating on a new battle to save woodland threatened by a car park being built at Ladybridge Football Club.

The designs of the nine detached three and four-bedroom houses will have to be approved by Bolton Council planners.

A council spokesman said: "We viewed this as one of our assets to sell and that is what we have done. The Secretary of State has approved it and the buildings are not listed." Classes outdoors for delicate pupils LOSTOCK Open Air School was originally set up as the Lostock Industrial School with the philanthropic aim of rescuing children from the worst aspects of the industrial revolution.

Its name was later changed to Lostock Park School and took care of disruptive pupils.

Facts and figures about the school:

Built at original cost of £5,000 in 1870;

Originally called Lostock Industrial School, it was sited at Lostock Junction because it was considered one of the healthiest places in Bolton at a time when scores of mill chimneys poured out smoke and industrial pollution;

The trustees of the school gave the school as a gift to Bolton education authority in 1925;

It envisaged as an open air school with many classes taught in the outdoors for "delicate children" and for those suffering with respiratory and other medical problems;

Up to 100 children once lived and were taught there;

It had a heated indoor swimming pool as well as dormitories for the pupils;

The institution was closed as an open air school in 1986 and reopened as a place of learning for children with social and emotional needs;

But the school was earmarked for complete closure in 1995 after the council decided it could not afford £399,000 a year running costs;

The last of the remaining 31 pupils went in 1996 to the new Stocks Park School in Horwich.