THANKS, it's good to have ones experience of a problem confirmed, you feel less on your own, and yes I did scrape the traces back on the corner pins and thought I'd done a good job considering the scale of the pins.

I'm seriously considering de-soldering the chip from the board to site it elsewhere and to bend the row of pins alternately up and down to create enough space to solder wires onto them and back to the traces, maybe also in a staggered fashion.

Did your soldering do the job?