IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Ardwick Street, ST. HELENS, WA9 1LZ

This private car park and access road to a recent local authority office development is on the site of former industrial land (the Atlas Foundry once occupied this site) adjacent to the St Helens Canal behind the trees.

The always busy Fingerpost shopping area is full of the type of shops regrettably becoming increasingly rare in our bland towns.

Ground clearance in progress in preparation for the building of a new office block for Helena Housing.

The new office block for Helena Housing rises at the eastern end of Corporation Street. Compare with Image] taken from the same spot three months earlier.

It is indeed sad news that Holy Trinity Church in Fingerpost is likely to be closed and demolished. The way in which it was constructed using copper slag blocks, cement and industrial rubble is probably one of the reasons it is so costly to maintain.

Holy Trinity Church was built in 1857 in the “Early English “style”, simple with a layout based on the typical rural church of the 13th Century. The church was built to a T-shaped plan. There were galleries at the west end and in each transept, and the building could seat 616 people. In 1886 the church was extended and reordered in order to accommodate changes in the style of Anglican worship in the late Victorian era. Parr/Fingerpost was not a wealthy area so a cheap and plentiful local material was used for the outer face of the solid walls: slag from the local copper works. This very hard, glassy material (a waste product) was used locally for building although its use in building declined and was almost extinct by the 1880s; very few slag buildings survive today. The church is a Grade II listed building (Historic England List Entry Number: 1199308 https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1199308 ).