Day old chickens in the parlour cupboard

And the childhood excitement of watching cattle being driven, hot-hoofed, through St Helens to the town-centre abattoir.

These are just some of the boyhood memories which spill from the pen of Keith Whalley, of the Keyfoto camera business in Ormskirk Street. His thoughts were triggered by Clock Face reader Janet Fenney's earlier mention of Smithy Brew (Brow) and the characters who once enlivened that sloping corner of the district.

Keith, who shares my surname but is no relation, was born there, at 23 Parr Street, in 1936. And he vividly remembers a great deal of what happened among the working-class community during the second world war years.

"I cannot say there was a proper smithy there", he writes, "but there was a man who mended chains, hinges, railings and wheels. He had a small place behind The Rustic View - a petrol station closed for lack of fuel during the war and right until the late 1940s".

It was owned by a character known as Spec Appleton, so called because he was a speculative property developer. "As children, we played there and had a great friend in an Alsatian guard-dog called Mary!" says Keith.

Next to Rustic View, to its left, was the canal with a half-sunken, square-shaped vessel, dubbed 'the slutch boat'.

Keith and his childhood pals would clamber across this to the other side, where the old Ship Inn had, by this time, become a doss house.

He adds: "To the right was the Imperial Caf, owned by Nelly Fringe, not her real name, I'm sure, but bestowed on her because of her hairstyle. This caf was quite notorious during the war, along with the Station Caf in Shaw Street.

Many American servicemen from Burtonwood air base found 'entertainment' therein. "We would gather outside," Keith recalls, "asking 'Any gum, chum?' until frequent visits by the police would move us on for a while".

The canal towpath, down by Todds' works, and the Rabbit Field, on the other side of the railway line (along with the local stonemason's yard) were highly popular canoodling corners with the GIs and their local female conquests.

The cattle market was close to Keith's boyhood home and the beasts were actually herded to it through the town centre, from neighbourhood farms, and from Shaw Street railway station. Their lives terminated at Tontine Street abattoir, with a Pied Piper trail of kiddies in their wake during that final journey.

Local landmarks

"Pigs were also penned there", says Keith, "and sometimes Mr Platt, the yard cleaner, let me use the hose to swill out the pens while he brushed up. For a while, a man called Ralph lived in one of those sties, while an older fellow lived in derelict sheds fronting on to Parr Street. He was known as 'Liquorice' and performed odd jobs".

A number of local landmarks spring to Keith's mind. St Helens Paint Company's works stood where now is the Salvation Army hostel, Salisbury House, named after the previous hostel, located in Salisbury Street.

Then there was Johnny Wall's general store, with Babs's toffee shop opposite. Nelly Harper ran a caf, making meat-and-potato pies which, Keith declares, were better than any he has ever tasted since . . . "and this in the days of food rationing".

Henshaw's pottery warehouse stood next to the market, the proprietor later switching to an early-years DIY store in Duke Street. "The site was taken over by Tommy Henderson who started off by mixing mortar in machines that rattled the houses for hours on end".

Other familiar sights included Brown's garage and the Wooden Hut sweet shop. Tommy went on to make ice-cream vans for the well-known local family businesses of the Fredericks and (Keith thinks) the Randolphs. He also constructed caravans and what would now be called mobile homes, from the obsolete carriers once used for transporting American aircraft wings.

Says Keith: "He also sold aircraft fuel tanks, used by some of us as canoes on the canal. And he later began to build houses, becoming Dalehome Estates". The triangle formed by Parr Street, Sinclair Street and Warrington Old Road was, for some mysterious reason, called The Skating. Sinclair House, in the street of that name, was used as a centre for physically handicapped, as well as being the rehearsal room of St Helens Amateur Operatic Society.

"We were let in to watch these rehearsals, provided we kept quite", adds Keith. "I remember 'The Student Prince', with Tony Hewitt as producer. Further along that street was open ground and the 'stick yard' where Keith and other kids of that era made pocket money by chopping and bundling firewood. He thinks the owner was an old man named Johnny who used a horse and cart to sell his sticks around the district.

The ARP yard and council refuse depot also spring to mind; and at the point of the street triangle was the Caldo Oils petrol station, where the above-mentioned Mr Platt, of cattle market fame, earned an extra bob or two.

Towards Church Street and the Nags Head was Spavin's wet fish shop. Then there was Seddons' glassworks, with the gasworks on the other side; and, next to the Nags Head, a small shop called Hankinson's. Standing behind was Todd Cottage, "only recently demolished to make way for the Matalan store".

Under and beyond Corporation Street bridge was Atlas Court; and branching off at the Lorne Hotel was Frazer Street with houses on its left side only. At the top, Bishops glassworks reared up, with the ARP wall on the other side. "This had four or five rounded and stepped brick shelves as part of its construction and the kids played a ball-throwing game, called 'bummers', against it.

The object was to aim the ball at one of those shelves, and then catch it as it shot back at unexpected angles. The wooden-gate entrance to the yard it enclosed was where a team game called 'Skilliallio' was played. "It's now bricked up but still exists".

Many local families were related through marriage. "And as far as I can recall there were only three non-Catholic families in the street - the Simpsons, Whalleys and Waterworths. This was not a problem, though, we were all fighting to survive".

There were also a couple of 'Polish' families, who were actually Lithuanians. "Next door to us", says Keith, "lived Maggy Pole, who name was really Sadowski". The Machocas and Almonds lived across the street. What I found odd was that a lot of married women were known by their maiden names, causing a problem when being sent to them on an errand".

And directly opposite the Whalley home was Fanny's, a sort of boarding house for itinerant Irish workmen. "Most of the street's families were of Irish stock, and this small area benefited from this. We were a true community! We kept chickens under a cupboard next to the fireplace, and when these became hens they joined the rabbits in the back yard".

Winter evenings were spent helping to make peg-rugs from cut-up strips of discarded clothing weaved into a sack-cloth backing. "These were dust traps and my mam spent hours beating them in the yard. No-one would use them today, but in those cold winters, and with little available fuel, they were a godsend when spread across the bed for warmth.

"The Smithy Brew folk were lucky, in a way, to live close to the gasworks during those dark, wartime days.

Coke was sold there, one sackful per person at a shilling a time. But it entailed standing in a long queue for hours on end.

"To keep our place in the queue, my mam and I would take half-hour turns. One very bitter winter she brought bricks, which had been heated in the Range oven and then wrapped in a cloth. These were for me to stand on. When she took my place, I carried these bricks home to re-heat them".

Ginger beer was delivered in stone jars, and before exchanging the empties for full ones, they were used as hot-water bottles. In those long-gone days, before central heating, double-glazing and loft insulation, all sorts of efforts had to be made to keep winter's chill at bay.

"My dad made us a wooden truck with pram wheels", Keith remembers. "And mam and I went to the colliery site, off Sherdley Road, to join the hundreds of others, scavenging bits of coal from the spoilheaps.

He signs off: "So many memories have been triggered by the letter from Janet Fenney on your page and I apologise for rambling on a little".

YOU must be joking, Keith! Those recollections, I know, will delight countless customers of this column who lived through similarly tough, though tremendously neighbourly, times.