THOUGH, in bygone times, the one-time village comprised little more than a few strips of barley fields and open meadows, the ancient area of Haydock once came under the ownership of a family who could boast its own coat of arms.

This was a large cross upon a shield shape, and with the top quarter adorned by a fleur-de-lis.

The first distinct notice of Haydock (later called Hedoc, Haidoc and Haddock) reaches back to 1168 when a privileged gent called Orm de Haydock owned it, plus that oddly-marked coat of arms.

My old mate Lobby Littler, one time fairground prizefighter from Clinkham Wood, is a keen student of local slang who insists on calling his old hometown Haddock (without the ‘y’ in it).

Now in his eighties, he often ploughs in with his historical evidence of the village, once mottled with coal pits and boasting Lancashire’s longest village street, running from the Ship Inn at Blackbrook to Lodge Lane, close to Haydock Park racecourse.

“Mind you it’s not the same,” he says of a place whose population has upwardly exploded in his lifetime and added supermarkets to its shopping scene. “Old Haydock is sadly a place of the past!”