A FRIEND had his house valued just before Christmas. It’s a Victorian semi in Farnworth, Bolton. He thought it was worth £130,000. Turns out his estate agent recommends putting it on the market for £300,000. “I reckon there could be something going on here,” he says.

He’s not wrong, as they say in Bolton. Suddenly, it seems, there is a buzz about Bolton, the former mill town to the north of Manchester. And it’s not all due to the comedian Peter Kay, who has put his home town firmly on the map through his live shows and his television comedy Phoenix Nights. Kay, worth a reported £8 million, still lives in the Bolton house he bought five years ago for £187,500.

Prices in Bolton have rocketed by a whopping 131 per cent since 2002, although the average price for a property remains relatively low, at £141,623, against the England and Wales average of £211,168 recorded by the Land Registry.

“There are a number of reasons why Bolton is doing so well,” says John Broadbent, of Knight Frank in Manchester. “It has benefited from what’s been going on in Manchester, and is only 20 minutes away. There has been a lot of inward investment, which has helped the regeneration of the town. And there is a lot of affordable property, which is appealing to local people as well as investors; average residential values in Manchester are £280 per sq ft; in Bolton, like for like, you’re looking at £215 to £220 per sq ft.” Broadbent is tipping Lostock, with its big, detached houses, close to the countryside and Junction 6 of the M61, as this year’s Bolton hotspot.

The “Manchester effect”, which has been felt by Bury, Blackburn, Oldham and Preston, has contributed to a general rise in house prices in Bolton and the confident undertaking of new housing developments to attract the growing number of commuters who work there.

At Deakins Park, outside Bolton, the developer Charles Topham has built 40 townhouses and 89 flats in 32 acres of woodland. The spec, with cedar cladding to external walls, and wooden floors, is unashamedly aiming at the kind of purchaser who might otherwise be tempted by a city pad. In the first phase, duplexes start at £309,000, townhouses at £389,000 for three bedrooms and £475,000 for four bedrooms.

Julie Ellis, 28, chose a considerably less expensive option when she and her husband, Phil, bought their first home in 2004. Their two-bedroom stone cottage in Doffcocker, Bolton, cost £97,000. Julie, who works in the construction industry, says that a similar property near by has sold recently for £130,000. The couple, who both commute to Manchester, chose Bolton because the house prices were cheaper than in south Manchester, where they looked originally.

“We have made a home here and we see no reason to move,” says Julie. This is a sentiment echoed by many born and bred in Bolton. It has a population of 261,000, and there are good shops, an astounding range of pubs, bars, cafés and restaurants, a proper theatre, and an impressive town hall, which was built in the 1860s and dominates the pedestrianised Victoria Square.

For all its northern robustness, there is an alternative undercurrent in Bolton. The town has spawned many musicians, including the Houghton Weavers folk group and the songwriter Badly Drawn Boy. An “eco-scene” has been thriving since the 1980s through the Bolton Gathering of Organic Growers, which promotes local produce via allotments and food cooperatives.

Perhaps that is a legacy of the religious nonconformism that thrived in this part of the North West. In its heyday the town had more than 200 cotton mills and factories. It is good to see developers such as P J Livesey turning many of them into homes. P J Livesey’s latest project is the transformation of the 80-year-old, Grade II listed Holden Mill into 284 flats; prices at The Cotton-works start at £108,000 for a one-bed flat.

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