Remote Greater Manchester village so idyllic it’s a ‘privilege’ to live there

Tucked away in a picturesque valley between Bury and Ramsbottom, the village of Summerseat is about as sleepy as they come.

Surrounded by lush green countryside, it is home to no more than a couple of thousand people. Once a centre for cotton spinning, Summerseat is now a sought-after area where the average property sold for more than £265,000 last year.

But it wasn’t always this way, according to those who live there.

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“It’s very gentrified now but it wasn’t always so,” said Karen Nolan, who has called Summerseat home since 1975. A lot has changed since then, the 66-year-old explains.

“The price of property is very expensive now,” said Ms Nolan. “I moved here because it wasn’t expensive.

“When I first moved in, it wasn’t a fashionable place to live. The river used to be a different colour every day because of the pollution.

“Now it’s a really pretty place to live. It has a quaint feel to it and everyone is lovely and friendly. It’s great for the motorway, even with all the traffic.”

Although the earliest reference to Summerseat was in 1556, the area consisted of no more than a scattering of farms and cottages before the arrival of the cotton industry in the late eighteenth century.

By the beginning of the 1800s, there were at least five spinning mills in the village. As people came to work at the mills, Summerseat’s population increased.

In 1876, the imposing Brooksbottom Mill was built along with rows of terraced houses nearby for the workers. The mill’s splendid mid-Victorian stone edifice remains today, although it has since been converted into a block of luxury apartments known as The Spinnings.

Lorna Dales moved into The Spinnings two years ago after previously living in Spain and the south of France.

“It’s a big change but we like it,” she said. “It’s peaceful and there is beautiful countryside.

“I know we are close to Bury but it has that small village feel. My husband is more country people and I’m more of a town person, so we have the best of both worlds.

“Bury is ten minutes away then we can hop on the tram to Manchester.”

Despite its idyllic location, the village is also just minutes from junction 1 of the M66.

But its proximity to the motorway means traffic is a persistent problem. Bass Lane, a narrow single track lane that links the village to the M66, is particularly bad at rush hour, Ms Dales explains.

“It’s horrendous,” she said. “You get all these 40 something blokes in their vans thinking they can plough down there.”

In a bid to improve traffic flow on Bass Lane, villagers previously created their own signs urging drivers to pass down the road two cars at a time.

However, the signs were later taken down by Bury council, which claimed they were ‘illegal’.

“If you get more than two vehicles going together and they get stopped, they can’t pull into a passing place,” said Summerseat resident Roy Crowther.

“The only thing you can do is put a sign up on Bass Lane saying two vehicles at a time.”

Karen Fitton lives in Plantation View, a pretty row of terraced homes that looks out across Summerseat Park. The row was one of ten built to house workers at the nearby mills.

But in the 1980s – after Summerseat’s mills had all closed – the council demolished five of the rows and modernised the remaining five.

Ms Fitton used to live on another of the streets and remembers the rows – known locally as ‘the Brick Houses’ – when they were rather different.

“It was not a nice place to live,” she said. “It was a bit embarrassing to admit you lived down here.

“People used to call this the Gorbals. The houses were close together and there were no gardens.

“Now it’s a beautiful place to live. We have people posting letters through the door asking if we are planning on selling up any time soon.

“I will not sell this house. I want to keep it in the family.”

Graham Harwood moved into his home in Thorn Street at the end of last year after being seduced by how ‘lovely and quiet’ the village is.

While he bemoaned a lack of transport links, he said Summerseat’s remoteness is part of what makes it so special.

“The transport links are very poor,” he said. “There’s only a very basic bus service and it doesn’t run in the evenings.

“We do have the heritage railway that you can catch at weekends but it’s for tourists really.

“Part of the charm is that it’s quite hard to get to. We’re very privileged to live here.”

Summerseat made national headlines on Boxing Day 2015 when the Waterside Inn pub collapsed during severe flooding. Footage of the 200-year-old pub, which straddled a bridge over the River Irwell, was splashed across TV stations and newspapers after it was dramatically swept away following heavy rainfall.

Ms Nolan recalls that day all too well. The River Irwell flows just metres from the front door of her home in Waterside Road.

As the water crept closer and closer to her property, she and her family could only watch on helplessly from upstairs.

“It was very scary,” she said. “I didn’t think it was going to stop.

“We were 15 minutes from being evacuated. The water was just below our door step but it never came in.”

She fears a repeat of the flooding whenever there is heavy rain, she explains.

“It is a constant fear but it has never been as bad as that,” she said.

Such community spirit is the key to Summerseat’s success, says Annette Roscoe, the co-owner of Lorna’s Korner.

She gave up her job as a teaching assistant to open the café along with her sister, Lisa Hardman, last year.

“It’s a very close-knit village,” said Ms Roscoe. “If anybody is in trouble everyone rallies around.

“When we had the floods, people with spare rooms were saying ‘come and stay with me’. That’s when your community comes together.”

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