Marie Walsh has seen plenty in more than 60 years behind the counter at beloved Bolton bakery Ye Olde Pastie Shoppe.
She started serving customers at the Churchgate shop in the early 1960s, when it was one of many businesses in a thriving town centre.
Back then, Bolton's streets thronged with shoppers from across the North West, drawn to iconic stores such as Whitakers department store and Prestons of Bolton jewellers - known to many as the ‘Diamond Centre of the North'.
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"There were so many shops on every street," Marie, 84, recalls. "If you look at old photographs, there were crowds of people shopping in town. It's just changed so much."
Today, things are rather different. Boarded-up shops line Deansgate - the town centre's main thoroughfare - and the walkways of the ageing Crompton Place shopping centre.
Prestons of Bolton and Whitakers - which later became Beales - are no more, while national brands such as Debenhams and BHS have also departed.
Earlier this month, it was announced that Bolton's much-loved Marks & Spencer store in Deansgate is also set to close - a decision M&S blamed on changing 'shopping habits'.
The departure is the latest in a series of bitter blows to Bolton's high street - and has left many here angry and disappointed, including Marie.
"The town centre is just dying a death," she said. "The footfall is very poor now."
Ye Olde Pastie Shoppe has been in Marie's family for 125 years and is a Bolton institution, having survived two world wars, multiple recessions and a pandemic.
Walk past at lunchtime and you'll often find a queue snaking out of the door. Manchester United legend Gary Neville is among the historic bakery's famous fans, and professed his love for its pasties during a recent visit with Bolton-born boxer Amir Khan.
Yet while Marie's business continues to prosper, she is increasingly worried about the town centre as a whole. "There is nothing to entice people to come here," she said. "All the shops are closed. Bradshawgate looks like a bomb site. It's just derelict. If you come down it in a morning, you are lucky if you see one person.
"My husband died three years ago. He said he was glad he lived when he did because he loved Bolton and could see it going downhill."
Marie and her husband are not the only ones devastated by what the town centre has become. Once a bustling shopping destination, it is now a shadow of its former self.
Closed-down stores are everywhere. In Bolton, more than one in three shops are vacant, according a report published last year by the charity Power to Change. The town also has the second highest persistent vacancy rate - where a shop has been closed for more than three years - in the country (16.8pc) and more than three times the national average.
Nowhere is the sense of decay more apparent than on the fringes of the town centre. The Bank Street approach to Deansgate is virtually a solid row of graffiti-stained eyesores, while the bottom end of Bradshawgate resembles a wasteland.
Both have been earmarked for development in recent years, but little progress has been made on either project.
It's clear that many Boltonians share a sense of frustration over the town centre's decline. Tom Garside, 66, described M&S's announcement as 'yet another death blow to the town centre'.
"I'm born and bred in Bolton," he added. "It used to be a thriving town. You look at Bury and it's thriving. This is like a tomb.
"I don't think the council know how to attract new businesses when businesses leave. Debenhams has gone, BHS, Mothercare, all the big shops have gone. It's all phones and betting shops, charity shops and fast food."
Emma Seddon, 27, rarely visits the town centre these days. She now shops in Wigan, where she claims there is 'a better choice'.
"I'm only here now because I'm getting my car serviced," she explained. "I don't tend to come into Bolton anymore.
"They got rid of the Zara, these are the things that draw people in. It used to be quite good. I think they need to pump a bit of money into it, get rid of all the pound shops on the front because it doesn't look great."
Farhat Kara, 26, described Bolton as 'a ghost town'. "I've lived here all my life and I used to love coming here," she added. "Now, if I brought my daughter here, it's like 'what a boring place is this to come.'
"It needs a spark. The only thing you see nowadays is the police. I used to love coming to Bolton but now I go to the Trafford Centre, or Manchester Arndale, or Cheshire Oaks. Now that M&S is closing, it's like, what's next?
"People used to come to Bolton from Preston, Blackburn, and they enjoyed going to Bolton. Now they escape Bolton and go elsewhere."
There has been investment in Bolton, most notably in the Market Place shopping centre.
A redevelopment project saw the old market hall - home to a range of independent traders and quirky shops - transformed into a mall with major brands, as well as a cinema, bars and restaurants.
Some view the decision to build a sprawling out of town retail complex at Middlebrook in the late 1990s as a key turning point in the town centre's fortunes.
A host of well-known brands and restaurants soon moved into the retail park and, boosted by the convenience of free parking, Middlebrook become an instant hit with shoppers.
While shoppers and traders are quick to draw a link between the contrasting fortunes of Middlebrook and the town centre, the challenges facing Bolton are far from unique.
Changing shopping habits have seen many retailers move away from the high street, leaving boarded up buildings and hollowed-out town centres across the UK. The coronavirus pandemic only made matters worse, exacerbating the decline in footfall in towns such as Bolton.
It has left councils across the country reckoning with what the future holds for their high streets. While Bolton council has recognised the need to transform the town centre, its efforts to do so have repeatedly been thwarted in recent years.
In 2018, the local authority purchased the now dilapidated Crompton Place, and announced a £250m scheme to demolish the current shopping centre to make way for 46 new retail units and a 110-room hotel, along with a 300 space car park, offices and more than 150 homes.
It was hoped that work on the project would begin in late 2021, but the scheme hit a snag when the two developers involved - Chinese giant Beijing Construction Engineering Group International (BCEGI) and Liverpool real estate firm Granite-Turner - pulled out of the project in October of that year.
Granite Turner also backed out of developments it was overseeing at Trinity Gateway and Le Mans Crescent. A scheme to build a 20-storey apartment block, a multi-storey car park and a luxury hotel at the Trinity Gateway site, between Trinity Street and Bradshawgate, was approved in late 2019.
Plans were also in place to convert the former Bolton Magistrates’ Court building in Le Mans Crescent into a hotel and spa. The council cited the Covid-19 pandemic and ‘the decline in demand for office space’ as some of the reasons backers pulled-out, and said they were confident new developers would be confirmed in the future.
The Crompton Place plans were dealt a further blow the following month when the council missed out on £16m in funding from the government's 'levelling up' project. It later emerged that the council had missed the deadline for submitting its bid as its email was too big to send.
The project has since been shelved after the council struggled to find a new backer.
In another crushing blow, a further bid for levelling-up funding to bring a hotel and conference complex to the town centre, and make improvements to Market Place, was rejected by the government this month.
Bolton council’s Conservative leader Martyn Cox expressed his ‘deep disappointment’ over the decision and said he would make known his disquiet ‘at every level of government’.
Meanwhile, Bolton South East MP Yasmin Qureshi described the decision as 'beyond disappointing' and said the redevelopment plans would have 'given a new lease of life' to the town.
In a letter to Levelling Up secretary Michael Gove, Ms Qureshi asked for an explanation for why the bid - and another to ease congestion traffic problems near to Middlebrook - was turned down.
She wrote: "In my view, this bid is a lifeline which my town cannot afford to miss out on – our high street is dying a death, and a once-thriving commercial centre is a shadow of its former self."
Yet it isn't all doom and gloom. Bolton's Octagon Theatre reopened in 2021 following a £12 million revamp and was recently shortlisted for Theatre of the Year at the 2023 The Stage Awards.
The town centre has also become a popular filming destination in recent years. Hit BBC shows Alma's Not Normal and Red Rose were filmed and set in the town while Bolton's streets have portrayed other locations in It's A Sin and Peaky Blinders.
And while Bolton may have lost some of its biggest names, a host of successful independent businesses remain. Tucked away in St Andrew's Court - an enclave home to a number of independent traders - is clothing shop Mea Fashion.
Sue Calland runs the shop with her sister and has worked there for 35 years. Back then, Sue says Bolton was a 'beautiful town' with a thriving high street.
She has witnessed many changes over the decade and says she is 'gutted' about the prospect of M&S leaving Bolton.
"It's really sad," she said. "I don't want it to go. I want the town centre to thrive because I'm proud to live here."
Many of Sue's customers travel from out of town. She says they enjoy the personal touch she offers and rejects the idea that the high street's days are numbered.
"The media say shopping habits have changed but if you speak to people, they want to come out to shops," she adds. "It's good for your health and it's good for your mind."
Brenda Burns, a proud Boltonian and one of Sue's regulars, is equally sad to see M&S go. She agrees that the town centre is not what it used to be, and says she frequently has to travel into Manchester to get what she wants.
"There's nothing special here," she said. "The Market Place is just chain stores. We need a good shoe shop and more restaurants.
"I like coming into town but I need a good reason to. It's up to the council to attract some good businesses with positivity, and people will come.
"We've got the space and it's pretty out in the square. It just needs investing in and it will thrive."
A spokesperson for Bolton Council said: "We were extremely disappointed to hear that M&S will close their Bolton town centre store. Unfortunately, as part of its wider transformation plan, M&S has concluded that the current building does not fit with the new business model.
"The challenges facing the high-street are not unique to Bolton, and the closure of major chains like Debenhams and BHS have impacted towns and cities across the UK. We remain committed to making the town centre a more vibrant and attractive place to live, work and visit.
"Among our priorities are regeneration, tackling anti-social behaviour and growing the night-time economy. The council continues its work to attract more private investment into the town centre, including at our the upcoming Invest in Bolton event on March 2.”
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