Foxholes Road
Bolton Council's highway status and adoptions page shows Foxholes Road as "adopted to ancient highway." Officially this means 'a historic public path or road, often unpaved, officially taken over by the local council, making it responsible for its maintenance, repairs, and upkeep as part of the public highway network, ensuring public right of way'. A 'historic path' where Foxholes Road is now supposedly existed prior to 1835, the date of the first Highways Act in England.
In modern times the roads in Horwich came under Horwich UDC until local government reorganisation in 1974, when Horwich became part of Bolton Metropolitan Borough and Bolton Council became the local Highway Authority. All the highway records should then have been passed over from Horwich to Bolton.
It seems that some time in the early 1970s (possibly when the Manor Road / Stoneycroft estate was being developed) Bolton Council intended to bring Foxholes Road up to full adoption standard along with Manor Road, Stoneycroft Avenue and Stoneycroft Close. Some of the residents in the houses already built on Foxholes Road were asked to pay an amount of money towards the construction of footpaths on what are now the 'service strips' in front of our properties. At least some residents paid up but the footpaths were never built. This is because Alan Smart, who lived next door down to where we live now, took Horwich UDC to court, arguing that he owned the 'service strip' in front of his house, not the local Council.
According to the late Jim Bentham and to David Smart (Alan Smart's son), Horwich UDC lost the case, the court having decided the service strips were part of the residential properties. As far as I know, this is the current legal position.
Bolton Council's records, however, still show the service strips as owned by the Council. A few years ago I asked the Head of Highways at the Council to clarify this but he told me the highway records (including details of Alan Smart's court case) that should have been passed over from Horwich to Bolton could not be found in the archives. He said he would look into it further but never did. I had said to him that it didn't make sense for adopted highways like Manor Road and Stoneycroft to be 'marooned' from the rest of the adopted network only being accessible by an 'ancient highway' (Foxholes Road).
I contacted our then Councillor Silvester about it. All he could tell me was that a 1970s court case resulted in the local Council refusing to send gritters up Foxholes Road in winter (and other things like road cleaning). He told me that he had previously asked Bolton Council to put Foxholes Road on the road cleaning rosta, which it agreed to do.
About 20 years or so ago, after complaints to Bolton Council about the general state of Foxholes Road, the whole road was resurfaced. Foxholes Road also has street lighting and, in theory, a highway drainage system of sorts. The question is, should Foxholes Road become fully adopted officially, like Mill Lane, Manor Road and Stoneycroft. Should the Council's highway records be amended to show the services strips as not owned by the local authority but by the householders?
At the very least Bolton Council should be asked to locate the highway records that were presumably passed over from Horwich UDC.
