DAREDEVIL Buddy Jackman's piercing Tarzan-like yodel, followed by a spectacular swallow-dive into the murky depths of the local clayhole, is forever etched into the mind of one of his old chums.

Memories, doubtless revived by the recent burst of hot weather and the sight of local schoolkids on their summer holidays, prompted Ken Melling of Parr to put pen to paper.

And he's forwarded a superb account of childhood adventures played out against a background of industrial dereliction, polluted streams and worn out terraces.

Ken turns the clock back to the 1940s when Parr, in particular, was still littered with the decaying relics of the industrial revolution.

"We had the lot," says Ken, "Chemical tips, the skeletons of old factories, tall industrial chimneys and water-filled clayholes - some of them reputed to be hundreds of feet deep. Wildlife mainly consisted of rats and bats.

The notorious Stinking Brook (now well on the way to revival) was then like an open sewer and with a pong that could fell an ox.

But it represented an adventure playground to Ken, Buddy and the rest of the old gang who often ran bare-footed in summer months, hopping across roads hot with gas-tar bubbles as the sun melted the surface.

And the scrubby open spaces were not just the haunt of kids. Grown men ran pitch-and-toss gambling schools away from the keen eye of the law, with a look-out posted high on the Chimics _ the local description for a huge chemical-waste mountain which sprawled through the district.

The childhood gangs frequently ran death-defying risks especially when skinny-dipping in the clayholes or sailing home-made rafts down the canal or on local flashes.

There were frequent tragedies as the urchin tribes were lured to the water's edge by the heat of summer.

Buddy Jackman's favourite swallow-diving spot down Sutton Road (leaping from a hospital wall into its bluey-green depths) was among the cluster of clayholes filled in after too many child drownings.

Among the old landmark sites still fresh in Ken Melling's mind were a stretch of chemical waste known as The Lickers, a smouldering tip of lime called The Blunder, the Mile Pite over Parr Stocks Road and the infamous Chimics which gave the Jackson Street area the appearance of a Wild West canyon.

Gaskell Street (nicknamed Dark Loan) was graced by a couple of clayholes and at the top was a creepy big house looking like the one featured in the Psycho horror film.

The course of the Stinking Brook towards Sutton led to a cluster of swimming holes -again remnants of industry - with intriguing names such as Wide Ocean, The Duckery, and The Coalie.

"This," says Ken, "was our dangerous paradise.

"During school holidays we'd camp on the Licker, near a spot we called the jungle - trees there are still standing."

Where the fire station now stands was a football field dusted with chemical dust. It became a hard-baked desert in summer and a quagmire in winter but it was once graced by one of the greatest stars in soccer history.

Ken and his knee-pants mob perched on a mound behind the goal to watch a local side play the German PoW team from the Ashton-in-Makerfield prison camp.

"The ale-houses had just emptied for the afternoon and sections of the crowd were in jovial mood."

In the nets, performing goalkeeping wonders, was this blond giant wearing padded shorts, woolly jersey and German forage cap. It was Bert Trautmann, later of Manchester City fame, via St Helens Town.

Close to Boardman's Lane was a timber yard containing crates of army surplus bicycles.

"One night," Ken recalls," we were poking around the crates under a full moon . We suddenly looked up.. and towering above us was the watchman silhouetted in the moonlight. He had a hook for one hand.

"Roger Bannister definitely wasn't the first person to run a four-minute mile!"

More from this poignant journey back to a bygone childhood in next week’s St Helens Star