THE road to hell is paved with good intentions - and so is Brookeborough's main street. And that is all it paved with - empty promises.

For the past four or five years it has been "top priority" with the Roads Service.

"Just wait till April when we get our funding for the year," they promise.

But come April and residents of the village are fooled yet again.

Then there are the sleepless night. The holy patchwork quilt of tarmac is rutted and worn. The houses and shops on either side are elderly and of questionable foundation. When a heavy lorry rumbles down main street in the dead of night the earth and all around it moves.

Arthur Ovens (pictured) is vice-chairman of Brookeborough Development Association. Like everyone in the village his patience is wearing as this as the tar on the road.

"We have been on with the DoE roads people for the past five or six years," he laments.

Maybe he is on to the wrong department. Perhaps he should try the Rivers Agency, because when it rains: "There's no gullies down one side of the street and the water flows from the top end of the town to the bottom."

The main street has become a grudge match between the residents and the DoE.

"We have been fighting them and fighting them," says Mr. Ovens.