A SMALL building and repair business is celebrating its 50th anniversary.

Thomas Cheadle & Son of Smethurst Lane, Bolton, has kept going over the years while similar concerns have faded away.

Owner Stuart Partington says they deal with commercial and domestic customers they have known for years and the business is promoted as: "The firm you can trust."

Mr Thomas Cheadle, who founded it in 1946 in the former barn which is still home today, was a former clerk of works whose father had been a joiner, builder, wheelwright and undertaker in Rainford, near Ormskirk.

Thomas Cheadle, who was 74 when he died in 1963, used the skills he had learned in his youth to establish the business with his 27-year-old son Ted, who had just finished serving with the RAF.

Ted, who lives in Over Hulton and is now 78, was still going into work for three days a week until four years ago. Mr Partington, aged 46, who has worked for the business for 17 years, is married to Mr Cheadle's daughter Anne.

"We must be one of the oldest firms in Bolton in this line," Mr Partington said.

The firm decided three years ago to compensate for a reduction in the demand for traditional skills by starting operations with PVC-u fascia boards and double-glazed plastic windows.

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