The three nights of Halloween started with a Saturday Broom making event, willow harvested from Leverhulme Park turned into functioning real brooms with free hot chocolate, a nice event with 50 people attending during the day. Then came our big Halloween Spooktacular, 140 hotdogs handed out, over 300 hot chocolate over three days, 160 wands given out that glowed in the dark once they had been put in the goblins mouth, Reece, Brad, Jenson, Carter, Jack, Riely taking turns in

One of the biggest questions we hear from the public for our Halloween events "Is this on again tomorrow?". We thought it would be nice to make a blog to highlight the extent of work that goes on behind the scenes by volunteers to plan and prepare for the three free nights of Halloween. In August with no funding for Halloween or Christmas, as a committee, we had to decide if we could even find the funding in time or had the energy to do it, usually a project would need a bid

Earlier this year we attended 'Pitch for the Planet' an opportunity to pitch a meaningful environmental action, we proposed installing four Kingfisher nesting boxes to help support our local wildlife in the East of Bolton, we had been successful coming 7th of 8 funded projects. We had to wait until we had been outside of the breeding period for Kingfishers, with our first box installed on Sunday 20th September at Bradshaw Brook, watch the video below. Establishing two boxes

As part of our 2025/2026 Bolton's Fund project we decided to push ourselves by exploring a new conservation strategy, creating a butterfly house for educational purposes that we hoped would lead to us releasing butterflies on the Garstang Hub, this was an entirely new learning experince for us. After the work was finished in the creation of a secure premise for our Butterfly House, we reached out to Ray Sandicroft for advice and guidance. When we first started Bolton Newt we

From July 2025 to July 2026 with volunteer help we completely transformed the Garstang Hub under the Bolton's Fund with 35 bat boxes, 5 Tawny Owl Nest boxes and four new raised beds to replaced our old and rotten beds. It was great fun teaching local families safe use of power tools to encourage and teach them how simple it can be to make wildlife habitats and growing beds, which we later grew our potatoes, onions and broadbeans. The site improvements are essential to the c

Bolton Newt held our annual Christmas Event in Breightmet, our 'Santa's Christmas Grotto' which wouldn't have been possible without our amazing volunteer's made up from local residents. We had roasting marshmallow's, Greenhalgh biscuits, selection boxes from santa (thanks to a kind donation from Bolton At Home), arts and crafts, a fully decorated site, a visit from the Christmas Yeti (thanks Frankie). We handed out over 160 selection boxes and the remainder was distributed to

In Spring 2025 we applied for funding to the CVS which was approved under the Bolton's Fund, this allowed us to host an entirely free two day Halloween event at the Garstang Hub. In the run up to Halloween, the entire site has been transformed with beds removed, an outdoor shack built, a new extended pirate ship and hundreds of hours of volunteer hours put into improving the site. On Friday the 31st we held our first day of Halloween joined by Taylors Theatre Academy who put

Back in August 2025, Newt's Pirate Ship was looking worse for wear, with rotting planks and in need of a new frame, we decided to rebuild the ship from scratch by removing the boards and creating a brand new frame. Not content with this, we decided to expand and create a brand new decking around the ship and expand this even further with a new addition of a climbing frame for the skeletons that also doubled as a cover for our projector in Halloween. A massive thank you goes o

After a few weeks of stripping rotten raised beds, salvaging wood, and renovating most of the site, we decided to hold an open day as we...

In 2019, Bolton NEWT assumed management of a neglected Bolton At Home plot, overrun with fly-tipping and brambles. Through dedicated...