JUST off Bewsey Road, not so far from The HJ, is a forgotten little graveyard.

No great mystery to that, the church attached to the tombstones therein, St Paul’s, was closed around 1980 and later demolished.

Six-feet high weeds and nettles have reclaimed some of the older parts of the burial ground, which is still accessible off Paul Street.

And it’s a bit of a shame really, as seven young men, so the story goes, met at St Paul’s Sunday School 140 years ago to found Warrington Zingari, the club which would morph into The Wire and then the Wolves.

You’d hasten to think what William Henry Wallington, Thomas Wallington, GJ Browne, GW Edwards, Earnest Early, Thomas Rathbone and Ebeneezer England would make of this last remnant of St Paul’s.

In fairness the pathways around the more modern corners of the old churchyard have been kept relatively clear thanks to WBC gardeners, with interments continuing through the 60s and 70s. But certain sections currently resemble The Day Of The Triffids.

We stand on the cusp of another League Leader’s Shield and it would be nice, with Warrington Wolves’ stellar reputation for community work, if St Paul’s could become a project. Or maybe there are some conscientious Scouts or Boys Brigade campaigners willing to roll their sleeves up.

One former Mayor of Warrington, Alderman James Smethurst, is buried there along with Edward Downham, a vicar and Canon Emeritus of Liverpool Diocese.

And if the graves of the family and friends of the seven founding fathers were cleaned up it would say a great deal for Warrington in 2016.

  •  Libraries are kind of Warrington’s thing.

Right up there with becoming the first paved town in Lancashire (1321), home to one of Cheshire’s oldest schools (Boteler – 1526) and the first newspaper in the red rose county (Warrington Advisor – 1757).

And of course, not forgetting the first public library in the country, opened in 1848 to complement Warrington Museum. Hopefully such a memory will be firmly lodged in the minds of any LiveWire official, or enabling councillor, as The Massacre of the Libraries begins.

Some of the proposals for this cultural cull were still quite fresh and had not been fully digested by Podium last week. This is the only excuse I can present for not eviscerating the feeble notion that replacing a 168-year-old institution with a touring library or a ‘lending locker’ at Golden Square should be allowed to fly.

Like any hard-headed realist, as the Government looks to return The North to pre-Victorian levels of patronage, I know there must be some rationalisation here – shorter opening hours or a long, hard look at certain under-performing sites.

But abandoning Warrington Library and most public reading provisions, and Internet access, south of the river? Someone’s brain is fused at LiveWire. You know, first there was the demolition of the Crosfield’s Theatre, then the bulldozers moved in on the old Boteler Grammar School and Warrington Baths.

If Warrington Library gets mothballed, then how long will it be before the mummified Egyptian kid and the other exhibits at Warrington Museum are looking for new homes?

  •  One final word – Warrington Trades Council has come in for some stick in these quarters, ostensibly over dubious support for Jeremy Corbyn. He’s still a dead loss metropolitan Trot who’ll guide Labour to electoral oblivion. Nothing will persuade me otherwise, dear comrades.

But WTC has been engaged in some outstanding work on behalf of the threatened Warrington YMCA and should be warmly applauded. More than ever we need our town stalwarts to stick together, for richer and poorer.