In his letter Mick Phythian says St Nicholas Fields wasn't rat-infested and full of rubbish (Letters, March 16).

I'm sorry, Mick, but your memory doesn't match the reality at the time as anyone who lived in Tang Hall, as I did, knows.

As the original campaign co-ordinator for St Nicholas Fields in the York Natural Environment Trust (YNET), I led walks around the site despite the rats and rubbish.

We even managed, on a few occasions, to take a YNET member who was wheelchair-bound. I remember carrying the chair, with Mick Phythian, over piles of broken glass. He is right about the flora that had grown up out of the rubbish. I produced the list of flora for the YNET report to the city council.

As for his saying there was no tipping, yes, officially the site was closed, but that didn't stop fly tipping and it didn't stop piles of tyres being set alight.

I have photographs from 1988 up to last year, when I left the site after serving as Friends of St Nicholas Fields project coordinator and park ranger from 1994.

I am pleased St Nick's has been taken up as a Government study. It proves the value of all the hard work put in by people in the community to make it what it is.

Gordon Campbell-Thomas,

Mapusa,

Bardez,

Goa, India.

Updated: 09:24 Wednesday, March 30, 2005