AVAST, me hearties! I've a dark yarn to relate of smuggling and its likely connection with an ancient St Helens glass bottle factory.

Or, to be more precise, my old chum Kevin Heneghan has kindly researched this tale of the unexpected, after spotting my recent piece about a bottle works which existed in Thatto Heath during the early 18th-century.

His findings have also produced yet another theory as to how that part of the borough got its name.

Reader Mike Kerr of Daresbury Road, Eccleston, had first set the ball rolling (May 24) with some historic facts and figures. And now, retired teacher Kevin, of North Road, St Helens, writes to confirm: "There certainly was a glass bottle works at Thatto Heath in 1721".

He then goes on to unveil a colourful story of the vast amounts of contraband brandy which were apparently poured into a consignment of bottles bought in Thatto Heath.

Nicholas Blundell, the Catholic Squire of Little Crosby, kept a diary from 1702 to 1728, and Kevin reproduces this entry for June 22, 1721: "Yesterday, William Carefoot went to William Atherton's with some scaffold poles for my new building, as I am soone for building there, and today he came home with some glass bottles from Thatway Heath". (Carefoot was the squire's coachman and general servant, while Atherton was a tenant at Ditton, on whose farm Nicholas Blundell was building a new shippon).

A further entry -- for December 12, 1723 -- runs: "Edward Turner's servant here, I pay'd him for some glass bottles which I had from Thatway Heath". Nicholas's spelling suggests that Thatway Heath was the original pronunciation, and seems to confirm the theory that the placename was based on a finger-post sign.

"But why", asks Kevin, "did he need those glass bottles? Part of the entry for February 3,1721, says mysteriously, 'This night I had a cargo of 16 Larg (sic) ones brought to Whit Hall'"

These, explains Kevin, were casks of brandy smuggled ashore just over a mile away . . . "so he'd have needed a lot of bottles.

"Whit Hall was a place in Little Crosby which he used for hiding contraband. There are several references in the diary to Nicholas and his servants bottling spirits or claret for the use of himself and his friends".

And the squire must have been a wily character, for there are also references to unsuccessful searches by the excisemen.

Kevin adds: "St Helens historians Barker and Harris confirm that there was a glasshouse belonging to the Leaf family in the Thatto Heath-Ravenhead district of Sutton around 1696. Like your earlier correspondent, they also mention John Hensey who built the 'Thattow Heath Glasshouse' about 1721."

And Kevin signs off: "But they do not tell us from which of these glasshouses Nicholas Blundell bought his bottles".

AND I suspect, after the best part of three centuries, this will for ever remain cloaked in mystery.