Idyllic canal-side town attracting visitors from far and wide
Industrial past has given way with scenic town rapidl growing into a hub of leisure and entertainment
APRETTY, canal side West Lancs town is fast becoming known as one of Lancashire’s most attractive hotspots for families and businesses alike.
With scenic barges and quaint cottages bordering the Leeds to Liverpool canal flowing straight through, the West Lancs town of Burscough is utterly idyllic.
The picturesque town was ranked as one of the best places to live in the UK, in a report by financial firm OneFamily back in 2015, which ranked Burscough as the 20th best place to live in Britain based on criteria including education, safety and childcare costs as well as local amenities, affordable property and green spaces.
Yet all of this is no surprise to local traders and residents, who have long known the up and coming yet quaint appeal of their beautiful home town.
The town, which saw its parish council rechristened Burscough Town Council last year, owing to growing numbers of residents, offers a host of independent traders, pubs, eateries and scenic walks.
The Advertiser spoke to some of Burscough’s independent traders, small businesses and residents.
Gary Fletcher, 53, joint owner of Cactus Ray’s Bar and Graze at Burscough Wharf, told said: “We have been on the Wharf for four years. We moved in here 18 months ago; we had a little cafe nearby.
“It was a bit of a ghost town here. We had a vision of it becoming like this with a little courtyard, and different things – food and live music. We had the vision and the vision has come true.
“We are really busy – especially at weekends; live music is our passion.
“Local musicians come from all over the north west, and up and coming musicians.
“Burscough has got a lot busier in the last few years. We have got people coming on the train from Wigan and Southport, and we are making it into something of a destination, with different things to do, like the live music. It’s got busier, and it’s becoming a destination. People come for a night out.
“Burscough is growing – there are many houses; it will be a third bigger than what it was.
Providing entertainment for those people, and bringing more people in is what it’s all about. People want to live here now.”
The couple, who between them have eight children, love enabling live music at their family run business.
His wife Elizabeth, 46, also co-owner of the family business, told the Advertiser: “We made it so that whoever comes here feels like they are in their living room, and comfortable enough to sing with their friends and like minded people, enjoying the whole vibe.
“We had a guitar on the wall, and people that had not played for years got the confidence to pick it up because we were a small venue, and it’s gone from there.
“Lots of people just jam – it’s a really good atmosphere. A lot of the staff are singers – we all just enjoy music.”
“When the pandemic hit, we were like, what do we do? We could only have so many people in the old cafe, and we would have struggled.
“Our premises used to be a music school, and we just got it 18 months ago. We have a wall – everyone signs it, and quite a few people who have signed the wall have gone on to have record deals.”
Hit by an industrial heyday in the not too distant past, Burscough became a hub in the late 18th century with the arrival of the Leeds to Liverpool Canal, which saw goods, passengers and coal from Wigan passing through.
Those days are long gone, but leisure and retail industries have sprung up where once factories and stables stood.
At Burscough Wharf, where once a veterinary centre was for horses that pulled barges along the canal, complete with stables, a canal cottage, and a warehouse, a different type of trader now walks within the walls.
These range from a music school to an arts centre, yoga, hair salons, restaurants and baby scans.
Carol Morris, 56, owner of Sewing Street, based at the wharf, offers clothing alterations, curtains and furnishings as well as dressmaking classes
She told the Advertiser: “”When I first came in, it was pretty quiet. My first thought was, my god what have I done because it was so quiet nine years ago.
“It is lovely. Over the years I have seen a lot more people coming in. People leave Burscough to go shopping elsewhere to the likes of Manchester or Southport. They come into Burscough for services, for entertainment.
“Burscough is unique, it’s picturesque, it’s a nice place to be and it’s lovely to come along the canal.
“We’ve got hair and beauty salons, massage services, live music, entertainment, baby scans, an arts centre and a yoga studio.
“At the Wharf, everyone who owns a business works in it; we are all independent traders.”
When the pandemic hit, it was ‘really hard’, she admits, as the classes and alternations both ground to a halt overnight.
She said: “It was really hard. It changed overnight. There were wedding dresses, people’s suits, dresses for the races that were hanging there ready to be altered – and all that stopped. People weren’t bringing anything in because they weren’t going out. We got a lot of interest in soft furnishing alterations, but it was to and we couldn’t hold classes.”
Since reopening, however, inte has surged back up, and Caro Fazakerley in Liverpool, says she observed huge changes in Bursco over the last nine years
“On a sunny day, it’s like b abroad; you can sit outside and enj drink or a meal in the courtyard. It seen the community growing - I’d it’s grown 30 to 40 per cent.”
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Another long gone feature of past was a huge lake to its north, ing back to the ice age, which in stretched from Rufford to Mere B to Scarisbrick and Tarlscough and drained in the 19th century, lea the present day lake of Martin Mer
The nearby beauty spot has been claimed by legend to be water in which the Arthurian sw Excalibur, was thrown.
Yet dreams of a different nature being brought to life by Julie Mitc co-owner of the Wharf, with bro Nigel Guy and joint owner of My B
Scan, which offers scans from seven weeks to term.
She told the Advertiser: “Burscough is thriving and booming, and there are so many new houses going up.
“Burscough is on the up, and the whole of the Wharf is fully occupied.
“Part of it is because a lot more people are wanting to stay local and people feel safe; they’re out in the fresh air, and they can walk along the canal. There are 15 businesses based here, from Thai massage, to a music school, to cafes and restaurants.
“The Wharf was owned by the waterways at one point, then it was a veterinary hospital for cart horses, a long time ago. It had been derelict for decades and most people would walk past and not know it was there. It’s becoming like a hub for the village.”
Meanwhile, the owner of a thriving martial arts school based in Burscough for more than a decade has praised the ‘massive’ and ‘dynamic change’ in the town post pandemic.
Iain McKinstry, chief instructor and owner of McKinstry Family Karate said the ‘wonderful community of Burscough’ had helped the business through the challenges of the pandemic.
He said: “McKinstry Family Karate has been part of the Burscough community for over a decade now – and nothing brought how great it was to for us to be here than the past two tumultuous years of restrictions.
“We worked hard to continue throughout by offering online classes, outdoor classes, socially distanced indoor classes – whatever it took to keep our members training.
“We were (and still are) overwhelmed at the levels of support and the strong community of our members and the people of Burscough that worked with us during those difficult times.
“With the help of other local businesses, we completely refurbished and repurposed our building to be the most awesome Martial Arts studio to train in.
“Now that Covid restrictions are being lifted and things are turning more to normal we can see massive and dynamic change in the area with many new people joining the community and our school – they must have heard that Burscough has previously been named in the top 20 best places to bring up children. The ranking considered a range of factors including education, safety and childcare costs, local amenities, affordable property, and green spaces.
“We look forward to yet more decades of serving the wonderful community of Burscough.”
It is a sentiment that is echoed by many.
Susan Evans, West Lancashire borough councillor for Burscough East, told the Advertiser: “Burscough was a vital hub back in the day. There were cakes and biscuit factories; there was a lot of industry here – it was mostly an industrial village before the 1950s.
“It’s a nice place to live, there are a lot of new families.
“Hundreds and hundreds of houses have been built since I’ve lived here, which has been 25 years. People want to live here; it’s just a nice place, in an attractive semi rural-location, and you live within walking distance of the countryside, and we do have the Wharf, which just attracts people from far and wide.”