DEMOLITION men have moved in to tear down a man's dream home after he lost his planning appeal.

As they raised the roof slates from Paul Rogers' eerily empty farmhouse on the verge of Astley's Moss the raised gun of an ex-Army battle tank, parked nearby, was a poignant reminder that the authority's enforcement order was being carried out to the word.

Normally the tank is parked further down Nook Lane but our photographer Colin Lyne couldn't resist the opportunity to take a picture of its turret-ounted cannon pointed in the direction of the farmhouse.

Coincidentally, the last time weapons of war were aimed at Nook Farm was in the early 1970s when the old farmhouse was set on fire as part of first world war scenes for the hit television series A Family at war.

Heartbroken coal merchant Mr Rogers couldn't face the prospect of seeing his dream home demolished but called in salvage men to carry out the work.

"I just can't believe what's happened, that I'm being made to pull the house down," said Mr Rogers who lost his fight against planners who ruled his rebuild of a derelict property went against Green Belt rules. He is still at a loss to know why the isolated farmhouse, rebuilt on the foundations of a property which had been part of the landscape for over a century, was seen as a blot on the landscape.

But he has complied with a public inquiry ruling that he must demolish his ideal home even though the Government inspector ruled he had been "badly misled" by local authority planners.

As reported in the Journal, he lost both his appeals against Wigan Council's refusal to grant planning permission and the enforcement notice requiring him to knock it down.

His rebuild of the derelict property on the original foundations was labelled "inappropriate and harmful to the Green Belt".

He refutes the authority's ruling that because the house had been empty and allowed to become a ruin that it should never have been rebuilt and now stands to find himself at least £90,000 out of pocket.

Locals who backed Mr Rogers feel the decision to remove his house from the landscape is tied in with future development plans for the area.

Mr Rogers this week said although the house had to go the four and a bit acres that go with it would remain in his possession.

He said: "The only way big business will get that land is over my dead body, that is of course, unless the local authority slaps a compulsory purchase order on it."