WE'VE hit the yedscratter jackpot! A cluster of keen old-timers have come up with answers about the origins of such old St Helens blots on the landscape as the Burgy Banks at Haresfinch, the towering Kimmicks spoilheaps, now mercifully removed from the Jackson Street scene, and the old Licker fields at Parr.

Two teacher colleagues, who had been chewing the fat over how these unusual placenames originated, chucked out a challenge (July 27) for customers of this column to come up with some theories.

Among those who responded were a couple of local history fans who wish to remain anonymous but whose initials are JR and KH. Both confirm that the Kimmicks reference is a corruption of the words chemics or chemicals.It was chemical waste by the countless ton that was dumped there to form the 'Parr Alps' in times long past.

A vivid word-picture is conjured up by JR who recalls: "Forty years or so ago, chemicals were still trickling from the base of the Kimmicks and into the nearby Stinky Brook. These used to turn the grass into different colours . . . blue, red, yellow, black, purple. In fact, all the colours of the rainbow. No-one ever told us what those chemicals were or whether they were dangerous.

"Maybe it's a good thing that the Kimmicks were flattened years ago," adds JR, "although I have often thought of going back to see whether the chemicals are still seeping into the brook and to find out whether there is still multi-coloured grass to be seen there."

He then turns to the subject of the Licker zone. "The name is slang for liquorice. I remember being told in the late 1940s and early 1950s that it was given this name because the earth there was of an unusual light-brown colour, exactly the shade of the liquorice-root sticks that nearly all the kids of those times loved to chew on."

Other customers of this column, however, maintain that the original spelling for that one-time wasteland, now developed into sportsfields, was Liquor (rather than Licker) referring to chemical fluid seeping from the one-time dumping area.

And KH also casts doubt on that liquorice theory, pointing out that in the neighbouring Whiston area there's a Lickers Lane, origin of which seems to be a mystery.

Changing tack, he suggests that the name of the Burgy Banks at Haresfinch, on the site of the old Rushy Park Colliery, might well have a nautical root to it. "For me," he says, "the only logical explanation is that burgy was a thick brown liquid (oozing from the spoilheaps) that resembled burgoo -- a sailors' porridge of boiled oatmeal with salt, butter and sugar added.

"The word is derived from the Arabic burghul, meaning bruised grain. Probably some ex-sailor noticed the resemblance and the name stuck. It would be odd, indeed, if something so like burgoo derived its name from a different source."

ANYONE else got an interesting theory on the above puzzlers and can perhaps add a few more placename origins? If so, please write.