A popular “estate pub” that has served its community for around 60 years is at risk of closure after plans emerged to convert it into a daycare center. The Cotton Tree Hotel, which has served guests in Bolton’s School Hill area since the mid-1960s, is the subject of a planning application submitted last week by The Nest Therapy Ltd. was submitted to convert the pub building into a nursery with a perimeter fence.
The building, north of Bolton town centre, is still in use but has been marketed by its owners on property websites for around £295,000 in recent months. The Prince Street boozer has an attached event space that has hosted countless wedding receptions, funerals and other celebrations over the decades.
A recent post about the pub in a Bolton-centric Facebook nostalgia group brought back dozens of fond memories of the Cotton Tree. Those who posted their thoughts described fond memories of country and western nights, rock shows and karaoke nights.
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Some remembered their wedding receptions being held upstairs, many from the pub’s ‘heyday’ in the 1970s. The Bolton Pipe Band practiced upstairs in the 1980s, the thirsty pipers then retreated downstairs for a pint, and those who worked at the nearby Wallis and Hartley Mill went there on Friday afternoons to top up their wages.
To this day, on Armistice Day, the pub welcomes dozens of veterans who drop in for a pint or two and to share stories after the parade to mark the borough’s commemorations. The pub’s clientele and management proudly support several different charities.
With several estate bars closing every month as people’s social habits change, the Local Democracy Reporting Service visited the Cotton Tree early on a Wednesday evening to ask customers what it would mean to lose the only pub in the neighborhood.
It’s fair to say that the unpretentious Cotton Tree has seen better days. From the outside the building looks a bit run down, but that’s more than made up for by the warm welcome inside.
The neat and tidy main lounge is packed with people, around 20, and the atmosphere is convivial and fun, with clinking billiard balls punctuating the laughter and conversation. After paying the princely sum of £3.60 for a pint of premium lager, the pub’s regulars are eager to tell me what the place means to them.
Dave Williams, who lives in School Hill, has been a regular since he moved to the area eight years ago. “A few times a week I pop in after work for a pint or two,” he said.
“It’s a friendly place and most people know each other. This pub welcomes strangers, it welcomes everyone. “If a person came in for the first time, walked outside and left their phone on a table for four hours, no one would touch it.
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We care about each other. “If the pub closes I don’t know what I’ll do – probably just stay in the house longer.” Frank, 70, lives nearby and has been a regular at Cotton Tree for 43 years.
He said: “I would be upset if this place closed, it’s a big part of my life, it’s my social life. “The people here are all my friends and if it closes it would be like cutting me off to lose to my family members. “I know I would never see most of them again.”
Janice Slater, 54, and her partner James Stewart, 57, travel to the Cotton Tree from their home in Kearsley, about four miles away. Janice said: “There is a sense of community here and we look after each other. Everyone has problems and here you can talk to someone about them and laugh. When I heard about the plans for the building I was upset.”
James said: “It’s a focal point for this whole area, a place that still brings people together. I celebrated my 50th birthday party here and there were so many celebrations like this, weddings and parties where people got together and had a good time.
“Once such bars are gone, they are gone forever. If it fails, it would be a huge, huge loss for hundreds of people.”
A man still wearing his oil-stained work clothes. “I travel miles from where I live in Breightmet to get here. I’m doing this because it’s a real pub, a real pub, and soon there won’t be any more of them.”
Bolton Council planners will decide on the change of use planning application at a date to be determined.