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Just a quick round up of what's been going on in my Ward over the last month or so........ Didn't want to leave these important projects unfinished! Movie2.mp4

Not a problem! I do like a challenge and linguistics can be used to solve many historical conundrums. PS gardening questions are also welcome!

I had another look at this, but from a linguistic point of view. The English language has changed a great deal since 1739 so I was looking for similarities or changes in spelling that might have occurred. I didn't find any and the word forms have existed as written for several centuries prior to 1739. I did see one thing that got me thinking though. I know from my own experience that old handwriting can be difficult to decipher. As I mentioned above, some letters can easily be confused. Something I do is to look at the shape of words as well as the orthographic construction. Words have distinct and comparable shapes according to how they are spelled. If we consider a word as a straight line, there will be deviations upwards and downwards (rises and falls) from the line if the word contains: capital letters, which will produce a rise. The letters b, d, f, h, k, l and t will also produce a rise. while the letters f, g, j, p, s and y will produce a fall (the old 'f' and 's' had a tail. There are even some variations depending on the year of writing as hand style has also changed over the years. 'Honey' begins with a rise and ends with a fall. 'Sack' begins and ends with a rise. Using that pattern I've had a look around some old maps. I found something interesting, to me at least. A name that pops up often is Coney Garth (same pattern) just north east of Bothal It’s a huge farm with seemingly huge amounts of land. I’ve found it as far back as the OS First series 1805-1869 and a reference to it on Speed’s 1610 map as Cunny Garth. It might be worth thinking about if the hand style is difficult to read.

Thanks Eggy! I've had another look at the death certificate after reading your reply and I think it is only one word 'Chargeman' but the handstyle isn't the best so I can't be certain. Myself, I was wondering if "charge" could be anything to do with explosives.

Don't thank me Vic! Thank the corona viruset that's forcing me (and many others) to find ways of keeping track of the days, weeks and months when the usual landmarks have been obliviated by restrictions. The usual group activities that divided up my week: water aerobics on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Spanish group on Mondays and OAP group on Friday are no longer fixed points. We've had to find other landmarks. For me that's become: Letter writing on Tuesdays (I've adopted two elderly people in residential care and they both get a letter in the post on Wednesday/Thursday). I hope that's a landmark for them as well, now that visiting is restricted. Thursday I prepare a quiz for friends and family and post the answers to the previous week. Friday I post the new quiz. Wednesday night has become 'Tapas night'. We are steadily working our way through a Tapas recipe book I got from a spanish friend. Mind you, some of the ingredients are hard to get here. There doesn't seem to be any great demand for bull's testicles (sliced and fried are delicious apparently) or pigs blood. I wonder why!! We reckon we'll get another 10 Wednesday nights out of the book then we'll have to fill the slot with something else. I'm glad you like the quiz. It's not a bad idea to keep the grey cells active, particularly in these trying times.

CL - the Durham Mining Museum site has a section - Mining occupations in alphabetical order :- http://www.dmm.org.uk/educate/mineocc.htm What I don't know is if the profession 'Charge Man' refers to the same as 'Chargeman' as list on the DMM. I don't know if there is also a connection to the miner in charge of the 'Shot Box' as shown, and briefly described, in James's photo in the Dr Pit & Roes album. I'm sure @James or @HIGH PIT WILMA will fully ex[plain Chargeman 1894: Person in charge Chargeman tunneller 1894: Foreman in charge of men driving a tunnel Hewers 1825: persons that hew or cut the coal from its natural situation. 1849: A man who works coals. His age ranges from 21 to 70. His usual wages (1849) are from 3s. 9d. to 4s. 3d. per day of 8 hours working, and his average employment 4 or 5 days in the week. He also has, as part of his wages, a house containing two or three rooms, according to the number in his family, and a garden, of which the average size may be 6 or 8 perches ; also a fother of small coals each fortnight, for the leading of which he pays sixpence. 1892: The hewer is the actual coal-digger. Whether the seam be so thin that he can hardly creep into it on hands and knees, or whether it be thick enough for him to stand upright, he is the responsible workman who loosens the coal from the bed. The hewers are divided into "fore-shift" and "back-shift" men. The former usually work from four in the morning till ten, and the latter from ten till four. Each man works one week in the fore-shift and one week in the back-shift, alternately. Every man in the fore-shift marks "3" on his door. This is the sign for the "caller" to wake him at that hour. When roused by that important functionary he gets up and dresses in his pit clothes, which consist of a loose jacket, vest, and knee breeches, all made of thick white flannel; long stockings, strong shoes, and a close fitting, thick leather cap. He then takes a piece of bread and water, or a cup of coffee, but never a full meal. Many prefer to go to work fasting. With a tin bottle full of cold water or tea, a piece of bread, which is called his bait, his Davy lamp, and "baccy-box," he says good-bye to his wife and speeds off to work. Placing himself in the cage, he is lowered to the bottom of the shaft, where he lights his lamp and proceeds "in by," to a place appointed to meet the deputy. This official examines each man's lamp, and, if found safe, returns it locked to the owner. Each man then finding from the deputy that his place is right, proceeds onwards to his cavel†, his picks in one hand, and his lamp in the other. He travels thus a distance varying from 100 to 600 yards. Sometimes the roof under which he has to pass is not more than three feet high. To progress in this space the feet are kept wide apart, the body is bent at right angles with the hips, the head is held well down, and the face is turned forward. Arrived at his place he undresses and begins by hewing out about fifteen inches of the lower part of the coal. He thus undermines it, and the process is called kirving. The same is done up the sides. This is called nicking. The coal thus hewn is called small coal, and that remaining between the kirve and the nicks is the jud or top, which is either displaced by driving in wedges, or is blasted down with gunpowder. It then becomes the roundy. The hewer fills his tubs, and continues thus alternately hewing and filling.

Well, I for one, can't agree with that. I get a greater quantity of intelligible information from your reports than I get from some other sources - the operative word here being 'intelligible'. A (comparitively) short, plain, no nonsense, down-to-earth text that simply tells it like it is, gets more points from me than a long-winded, multi-page report full of tables, figures, and terminology - and I say that as a woman with a master's degree in English.

Thanks Canny lass. The reason for the videos is that I’m usually accused of being too verbose and you can imagine the reams I would have to write to get all that lot down. One of the accusations levelled at me is that I don’t tell people what’s going on???? Course that probably comes from the politicos who struggle to leap from one paragraph to another and who for decades have never engaged with their communities and it suits their narrative to foster the idea that nothing goes on because Independent councillors can’t get anything done. Well I’m thinking that lot is certainly north of £500K and in all probability something approaching £1M because while I know a lot of the costs I don’t know the costs of the likes of the road improvements and considering most things council wise cost about 2-3 times the usual rate I have no doubt the latter figure is not unrealistic! And BTW, that doesn’t include the £500K I managed to get in last year’s NCC budget for a sports facility at West Lea! A facility I worked on for 2 years had meetings with planners, green space officers, funders, user groups and fabricators. I had all the boxes ticked and even a set of drawings, I then had to hand it all over to NCC who basically pulled it! I just don’t understand why our Town is starved of investment while others, some less populated, get new and refurbished facilities costing tens of millions of pounds? I won the arguments, got the funding yet still we haven’t seen anything built? And it wasn’t the Administration who pulled it, they actually supported it! Another in a long line of sorry tales and something that has to BE changed!