FACTS of the frothy kind come pouring from the pages of a literary labour of love produced by former college lecturer Brian Tarry. His 104-page book, entitled 'The Lost Pubs of St Helens', is essential reading for all elbow-benders with a sense of social history.

Brian, who has spent three years in researching, writing, typesetting and even illustrating his deeply-detailed effort, features more than 80 old-time watering-holes that have vanished from the face of St Helens and its surrounding districts.

These include the intriguingly-named A1 Vaults, Baths Hotel, Coffee House (yes, it did sell beer!) The Crescent, Hand and Heart, Kerry Eagle, the Van Tromp, Nancy and Navigation Tavern. Then there are the more familiar pub names such as Running Horses, Feathers, George & Dragon, Victoria and British Lion.

These and all the rest have easy-to-digest descriptions, covering their histories, origin of names and exact locations, accompanied by neat map sections showing exactly where they once stood.

And yet, despite all the foaming facts and figures , as far as ale-swigging is concerned, Brian's as close to being teetotal as makes little difference.

"On average, I'm just a one pint a week man," admits Brian of Beech Gardens, Rainford, though he confesses to having a taste for the occasional liqueur.

And, perhaps more unbelievable still, Brian doesn't even have St Helens roots. He's a Brummie who nursed a teenage ambition to play on the wing for West Bromwich Albion.

That was before he embarked on a career as a metallurgist and chemist, arriving in the St Helens borough in 1959 and taking up a lecturing post at St Helens College.

Early retirement gave Brian the additional spare time he needed to research his specialised pub subject (hundreds of hours have gone into poring over old records, trade directories and Ordnance Survey maps.).

Why did he take on this daunting work of scholarship? "Well, it didn't look like anybody else was going to take up the challenge, the essential details being so scattered and diverse," he explains, "and it seemed a shame that so much social history might disappear for good."

For, during turn-of-century times, the pub was the main focus of social activity, often standing cheek by jowl with the local church so as to be handy in catering for wedding celebrations, chistening events and funeral parties. It was the main 'gossip exchange' and recreation centre (dominoes, darts, skittles, bagatelle and the rest).

All of this helps to build up Brian Tarry's word picture of the golden age of the tankard and taproom. And he hasn't stopped at that.

Already in the pipeline is a follow-up publication, 'The Rise and Fall of Beerhouses.' This delves back to times when the St Helens area could boast something like 200 named drinking dens with a least another 70 of them unnamed and of the front-parlour type.

They served up a variety of 'bathtub booze' brewed on the premises.

And just to top this off, Brian's also toying with the idea of turning out a book dealing with the history of pubs of today.

BRIAN'S first run of his 'Lost Pubs of St Helens' publication has been snapped up. But he's considering a reprint (at £3 a copy) if enough interest is shown. Requests can be posted to him at 6 Beech Gardens, Rainford WA11 8DJ.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.