BOLTON’S elephant obsession has been researched by a number of people who have come up with various possibilities for the animal’s high regard in the town.

Bolton History Centre, at Bolton Museum, has work by Mike Cresswell — author of Mike’s Hikes, local historian, walker and former Bolton Council solicitor — as well as information gathered by former Bolton Council archivist Kevin Campbell available to read.

The centre also has in stock a copy of the work by Russel Gregory, called “Bolton by the Elephants” which shows the many examples of the use of the elephants in Bolton.

Sadly he died in 2014 before he could finish his work but an unfinished copy and all his research notes have been donated to the centre by his family.

Mike Cresswell studied the elephants symbol in Bolton and believes its association could well go back to the Middle Ages when the animal had been seen by very few Europeans, particularly in the wild, and strange stories were told about it.

It became an important Christian symbol, he says and is often found on “bench ends and misericords in churches and most always has a castle on its back, obviously derived from stories of howdahs on Indian and perhaps Hannibal’s elephants.

He believes it was possible there was an elephant prominent in the old parish church of Bolton and that it became associated with and symbolic of the town because of this.

“I know of no record of such a carving but I can imagine it becoming an object of interest.”

There is also the possibility that it arises from the cotton-trading connection between Bolton and India, he says and that the elephants and castles were erected on the gateposts of Bridson’s Bleachworks in Chorley Street because of a visit to India or because cloth was exported to India and the symbol used to mark bales.