FORMBY Hall is in the process of being demolished.

Diggers started knocking down the popular community hub on Alder Street in Atherton on Monday after a campaign to try to save the historic hall failed.

A care home is expected to be built on the site and Atherton Residents Association (ARA) is now calling on Wigan Council to provide a replacement hub.

Chairman Stuart Gerrard said: “The people of Atherton will now be pursuing a replacement as Wigan Council’s core strategy states.”

Formby Hall was sold by the council five years ago.

Residents believed that it could be saved from demolition when a public inquiry was launched in April 2016.

More than 5,000 people signed an ARA petition to keep the bulldozers away from the hall.

However only the manner of demolition was up for debate, with the council’s planning committee not having the power to prevent an application to knock down a non-listed building from owners Formby Hall Ltd.

Campaigners claim the community venue belonged to the town and not the council and should never have been sold.

Chris Green, MP for Bolton West, which covers Atherton, said: "Formby Hall was a much loved community hub and a centre point of the town for decades.

“It is particularly sad that it is being knocked down 100 years after it was first gifted to the people of Atherton."