DOES anyone remember when the Huntsman area of Haydock was hit by German bombers?

The question pops up from my old chum Steve Abbott, the former Doncaster, Earlestown and St Helens Town soccer striker, now living in retirement at Lytham St Annes but a bred to the bone Yicker.

Pleased to hear that he keeps in touch with this cobwebby page via the Internet.

Steve looks back to his wartime boyhood and can recall picking up souvenir shrapnel pieces after a bomb struck the old Haydock Villa soccer ground.

And he also remembers when a landmine dropped somewhere in the region of the Huntsman pub, leaving a crater which, to his childhood eye, seemed at the time to be "bottomless".

He wonders if any other reader can fill in further detail, or can recount any other wartime bombing incidents which happened in his old Haydock home village.

IF so, I'd welcome a line or two, forwarded to our Star Office.