MYSTERY surrounds how a historic stone bus shelter in Saddleworth has been left in bits.
People living in Austerlands have been left horrified at what has happened to the structure on Huddersfield Road.
However, no-one has the answer as to how it ended up in that state, with its roof lifted off, on the afternoon of Tuesday, October 3.
The closest anyone has got is former chairman of Saddleworth Parish Council, Rob Knotts.
According to him, the parish authority was notified of the damage and staff took further action to bring loose stone down to make it safe for pedestrians.
Yet no-one has a reason as to how it was damaged in the first place – a number of people have requested any CCTV footage from that area.
Saddleworth Independent has contacted Oldham Council to see if they are aware of how the shelter ended up in its current condition.
Why have you contacted the council and not local residents who may have heard or witnessed something? This is quite clearly a purposeful demolition. Children/teens wouldn’t do this before anyone makes the usual comments scapegoating them. My guess is we won’t have any insight into who did this until we see whether it’s rebuilt stone-for-stone or simply scrapped and replaced with something else in an ‘opportunistic’ manner.
Exactly the same though had occurred to me as well.
This doesn’t look like casual vandalism to me ?
This look like the work of someone with an issue; some sort of grudge, considerable determination and possibly a JCB.
Those stone bus shelters are brilliant and especially when compared to the tin and plastic ones, (that practically come pre-vandalized,) in use through out most of the town, if indeed there’s even a bus shelter at all.
As always this will worst affect those bus users who are old, disabled or with young children.
Is it a coincidence the land at this bud stop was recently sold?
Once again exactly the same thought had crossed my mind, that’s small but reasonable plot for development and it’s going to take more than an OMBC Tree Preservation Order to stop an unscrupulous developer.
As we already know from previous experience.
My own feeling about this is that having bought the plot for commercial development, the new landowner might well have regarded the bus stop both as possible to obstacle to their getting planning permission and also as something that might reduce the value of the property when it had been built.
They probably now regard it as having been extremely fortunate that, “someone,” has taken it upon themselves to demolish it, thus saving them all that trouble and inconvenience ?
I saw it being demolished by some in a red pickup truck..it looked to me like it had become damaged by something and they then needed to make it safe
Maybe OMBC could use some “Developer contributions” for the reinstatement of this stone bus stop. We know they’ve got the money so let’s have a quick resolution to this problem. How can someone have ‘bought’ the land a bus stop is on? Surely the bus stop belongs to the council to be kept in perpetuity for the general public’s use?