HUGE industrial spoil heaps, known as the Burgy Banks, form just about the biggest blot on the St Helens landscape. Yet it all seemed innocuous enough when the Pilkington glass company decided to erect overhead pipework across an open expanse of the Islands Brow area of Haresfinch.

These pipes were designed to discharge slurry from the manufacturing process. And early alarm bells should perhaps have sounded when the cottage-dwellers, tending their neat nearby allotments, discovered the towering height to which the pipes were being elevated.

Since at least the late 1930s, controversy has raged over the Burgies, held responsible for flooding problems in winter and for wind-driven clouds of powdered clay and fine sand seeping into nearby dwellings during summer months.

Even today, the protests echo around the district. Ironically, the current outcry has nothing to do with waste dumping. It is levelled against a much-delayed scheme to clear away the glowering waste mountains and build an estate of private houses in that location.

Intruiging

Keeping an interested eye on the situation, 56-year-old Joe Donegan, brought up in a row of ancient cottages along Islands Brow (long since demolished) now forwards a couple of intriguing snapshots from the past. They feature family members posing against the then newly-erected scaffolding, carrying those overhead slurry pipes which would finally become engulfed by the enormous volume of their own liquidised waste.

There's just a slight, original incline shown over the shoulder of Joe's uncle, John Donegan, shown cheerfully cultivating the plot on which he grew flowers and vegetables. "He sold these to local folk", recalls Joe, of Princess Avenue, Windlehurst, " to earn enough for a pint or two at the Star Inn. John was then a well-known character around those parts"

The other family snap is of Joe's late father, also Joseph, who died six years ago. He's shown in RAF uniform, on leave from wartime service, with his sisters Margaret and Lilian on either arm.

Joe hopes that the look-back pictures will revive a few memories for old Islands Browers, while at the same time giving members of the younger generation a glimpse of how things used to be.