Helston's historic kennels water system could be placed on the World Heritage List, ranking it alongside the likes of the pyramids of Egypt and the Great Barrier Reef.

The suggestion to apply for heritage status comes from Helston town councillor Mike Thomas, who tomorrow will ask his fellow councillors for support in a bid to UNESCO.

There are only 30 sites on the list in the whole of the UK, including the city of Bath and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and currently the only Cornish link is the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape, which was added in 2006.

Speaking to the Helston Packet ahead of tomorrow's meeting, Mr Thomas explained: "We have had some issues about the kennels and how to protect and look after them.

"You could argue these kennels have got some real status in our heritage. All I'm asking our office to do is explore what's involved.

"The whole process is to see if we can find a way of protecting them and maybe attracting some money to Cornwall to look after them.

"We're used to them and see them every day, but how many towns have things like this?"

Aside from Flora Day, one of the things Helston is most famous for is its unusual waterways, which run openly through much of the town centre including both sides of Coinagehall Street and one side of Church Street. Early photographs show the same open kennels in Meneage Street, although these have since been covered over.

Described by some visitors as "drains" or "ditches," the granite edged, cobblestone-lined waterways - in which many motorists have come a cropper while attempting to parallel park - are in fact part of a sophisticated watercourse that begins just below Wendron Church, with water taken from the River Cober and directed into the kennel system by way of a small weir.

Sites granted World Heritage status by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation must be of "outstanding universal value" and meet at least one of ten criteria.

Perhaps of most interest to Helston's potential bid are the criteria relating to representing a "masterpiece of human creative genius" or "exhibiting an important interchange of human values, on developments in architecture or technology, monumental arts, town-planning or landscape design."

Other criteria include "bearing a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to a civilization," being an "outstanding example of a type of building, architectural or technological ensemble or landscape which illustrates significant stage(s) in human history," and "being an outstanding example of a traditional human settlement, which is representative of a culture, or human interaction with the environment."

Mr Thomas said he believed Helston's kennels would fit at least three of the ten criteria.

He pointed to another water construction already on the list, the 18km-long Pontcysyllte Aqueduct and Canal in north-eastern Wales completed in the early 19th century, which he believed already set a precedent Helston could benefit from.

Mr Thomas was inspired with the idea after attending a Cornwall Council planning meeting, where he learnt that there were cottages in Leedstown that had heritage status due to their age and association with mining, as part of the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape.

There are many theories over the origins of Helston's kennels. These include them being a late medieval drinking water supply; a way of supplementing the spring in Five Wells Lane and providing water for washing; to wash tin ore; or to supply the moat for a castle that used to lie at the bottom of the town, behind where the Grylls Monument now stands.

There is a suggestion is that at one stage they may have been found running down the middle of the street and used to take waste away from shops and houses.

Do you think the kennels deserve to be part of the World Heritage List? Have your say online at thepacket.co.uk or visit the Packet Newspapers Facebook page.