Canny lass

Thanks Eggy! Good film. It definitely wasn't this that I saw. Same shape and possibly size (hard to tell from a photo with nothing to compare it with). However, it definitely wasn't white. it was yellow, same as the Euclid trucks. I remember going to see it with my father and brother together with half of Netherton Colliery and their grannies! I understood it's 'walking' to be something of a 'one-off' occasion on the day. Netherton Lane was lined three-deep from Raisbecks Garage and half way to Nedderton Village to be able to witness the event!

That's perfectly correct except for the date. This site was at the top end of the colliery rows stretching from Fail's farm (Blue House farm) as far as North Ridge. This was in the late fifties before the works on the other side of Netherton Lane.

Answers to last week's quiz: 1. Magna Carta 2. The Central Line 3. Ena Sharples 4. Pansy 5. Head to foot 6. Crimean War 7. Winston Churchill 8. Pancakes 9. Blood and Fire 10. Australian 11. An Electric guitar (Used by Jimi Hendrix) 12. Four New quiz tomorrow.

Are you taking bookings Eggy? I've got a big party coming up next year!

That site, on the south side of the B133 between West Lea and Nedderton Village, was in use during the late 50s, early 60s and was mined by Wimpey. I remember that they had on site a small building, towards the West Lea end of the site, where they retreaded the huge tyres from the Euclid trucks. My brother worked there for a while. He used to come home with burns all over from the molten rubber. I'm not sure just how far south the site went but it was a huge site. I also have a strong recollection of visiting the site to see one of the huge machines "walking". I think it may have been 'Big Geordie', but I'm not 100% on that.

Pencils at the ready! Here it is: 1. Original copies of what can be found only in Salisbury Cathedral, Lincoln Cathedral and the British Museum? 2. On a London Underground map which line is coloured red? 3. Which Coronation Street character was played by Violet Carson? 4. Which type of flower is sometimes known as heartsease? 5. What does cap a pie mean? 6. Which war was fought 1853-1856? 7. Who said “When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite”? 8. Which food item is used in an annual race at Olney, Buckingham shire? 9. What is the motto of the Salvation Army? 10. What nationality has Wimbledon champion Rod Laver? 11. What is a Gibson Flying V? 12. Of how many islands does the Autonomous Region of Madeira consist? I’ll bet you didn’t know …. Nelson’s body was brought back to England for burial pickled in a barrel of brandy to stop it decomposing on the way home.

That brought on a real pang of home-sickness!

Great pity! it would have made the next bit of the research a lot easier! I've been looking at old maps the last couple of weeks. New report soon.

Sorry it's a bit late! Answers to last week's quiz: 1. Prostitute. At 85 yo she was the oldest prostitute in the UK, possibly in the world. 2. As 3. Pudding Lane 4. Keith Moon 5. The Ulna nerve 6. Thelma 7. General Pinochet 8. Binnacle 9. A tree 10. Queen Mary 11. 16 or 7 both are acceptable. Each cow has 4 stomachs –or one stomach with four compartments (depending on which line of thinking you follow. Each horse has one stomach 12. 2001 New quiz tomorrow!

There's many a true word spoken in jest - but I'm not saying which word(s) it is!

Tonight's quiz: 1. What was the profession of Sheila Vogel Coupe? 2. What is the chemical symbol for arsenic? 3. In which street did the Fire of London start? 4. Which drummer with The Who was renowned for dumping Rolls Royces in swimming pools? 5. What is the proper name of the funny bone? 6. In the TV series The Likely Lads what was Bob’s girlfriend called? 7. Which former Chilean dictator was arrested at a west London clinic in October 1998? 8. What is the name of the box in which a ship’s compass is stored? 9. What is a Honey Locust? 10. What was the Queen Elizabeth’s sister ship? 11. How many stomachs have 3 cows and 4 horses? 12. Which year did the terror attack on World trade Centre take place? I’ll bet you didn’t know …. Ducks only lay eggs in the morning.

Answers to last week's quiz: 1. 37 2. Christopher Robin 3. Recto 4. A Midsummer Night’s Dream 5. Pope John Paul II 6. Martin Luther King 7. Hamilton 8. Three 9. A Rusty Nail 10. Vulpine 11. Mary Ann Nichols 12. England and Australia New quiz tomorrow!

Consider your wrists well and truly slapped! You've no idea how many times I popped in for a good laugh yesterday.

Thank you AllanUK! There are two Hollymount Cottages taken up in the 1911 census, both small dwellings with only 2 rooms housing families of 3 and 4 persons. In both cases the enumerator gives the address simply as "Hollymount" as does one resident, George Gilroy. George notes under number of rooms: "Cottage: two rooms". The second resident, George's next door neighbour, Robert Todd, gives his address as "Hollymount Cottages". The cottages appear to be situated next to the main house. The first section of which now has dwellings of 2-4 rooms numbered 2 -12. The next 9 dwellings are given the address Hollymount House though some of the residents write Hollymount Hall. I think you are probably correct in assuming that they belonged to the house and I believe the first set of dwellings may have been situated in the rear part of the house while the second set were in the front part nearest the gardens.

Here we go again! 1. How many compartments are there on a British roulette wheel? 2. What is the name of the boy who features in the Winnie the Pooh series? 3. What is the right-hand page of a book called? 4. Mustardseed is a character in which of William Shakespeare’s plays? 5. By which name was Karol Józef Wojtyla better known? 6. The song Happy Birthday by Stevie Wonder was a tribute to whom? 7. What is the capital of Bermuda? 8. How many horns did the dinosaur Triceratops have? 9. Scotch whisky and Drambuie make which cocktail? 10. If dogs are canine and horses are equine, what are foxes? 11. Who was the first victim of Jack the Ripper? 12. Which two countries play cricket for The Ashes? I’ll bet you didn’t know … There are more than 17 miles of corridor in the Pentagon!

Answers to last week's quiz: 1. Bolton Wanderers 2. Megalomania 3. Stephen 4. St James’s Palace 5. Madagascar 6. 2 hours 7. Toad 8. Heroin 9. Wall Street 10. Lady in Red 11. Ava Gardner 12. Lead New quiz tomorrow!

There'll be no living with him for next few days!

Callum Hudson Odoy? Asking for my OH.

PROTEST!

Does that mean I'm not getting 'douze points' then?

Peter Shilton, Bobby Charlton, Bobby Moore, George O’Best and Jackie Milborn (Wor Jackie)! Never let it be said that women know nothing about football!

Thanks Maggie! There are some conclusions to be drawn and a couple of questions arising from it. I'll get round to them a bit later. Then it's more research to find out when it came to Bedlington.

Oddly enough, most of that was done in the garden! surrounded by nature The only real indoor work was in the library, which I did before the corona restrictions, and some bedtime reading. The isolation gave me the time to sort out my notes and write it up. Fortunately, apart from two snow days mid May we've had great weather - and still have! As for giving the brain a rest: Brains 'of a certain age' should not be put out to pasture. They should be exercised regularly, fed continuously with new things to do and 'rest' only while sleeping.

Bringing us up to the present day ... The Anglo-Saxon word halig, meaning “of good augury” (a good sign/omen) or “inviolate” (free or safe from injury or bad health), was already in use in Old English and there is good evidence to support a theory that it adopted some religious significance during the Middle English period (1100-1450). We find this evidence very near to home – in Durham. William M Aird in his work, St Cuthbert and the Normans: The Church of Durham, 1071-1153 (1998), tells us of Cuthbert’s importance in defining the identity of those who lived in the “Liberty of Durham”, an area of private jurisdiction not directly administered by the king but by someone who enjoyed the same, or similar, rights – in this case the Bishop of Durham. Cuthbert, Aird says, became an important symbol of the autonomy of the area and because of this the people living there became known as the “Haliwerfolc”. Knowing what we know so far, it’s not too difficult to break that word down into its component parts: haliw-er-folc. Haliw is the OE word halig, the letter ‘g’ having been replaced by ‘w’ in an attempt to reproduce the ‘hockle’ sound which I discussed earlier. Er is a Middle English genitive implying a connection to (rather than ownership of) a thing or person and no prizes for guessing that folc means folk. From this we can see that at the beginning of the Middle English period the word halig has acquired a definite religious significance. There are some who believe there is a relationship between ‘whole’ and ‘holy’ and that the religious sense of holy may have developed from keeping believers spiritually whole. https://www.google.com/search?q=holy+etymology&rlz=1C1GGGE_svSE562SE627&oq=holy&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j35i39l2j0j46j0l2j46.8504j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 A quick peruse of the Oxford Concise Dictionary of English Etymology confirms that the roots of whole and holy are in fact the same – hal. In retrospect, “whole” and “free from injury” do have a lot in common. Barber, The English Language, a Historical Introduction (1997), notes that already at the beginning of the period, 1100 AD, a few other Anglo-Saxon words were being used in relation to Christianity, among them: eastre (Easter), derived by Bede from the name of a goddess whose feast was celebrated at the vernal equinox and hel (Hell), then meaning to cover or conceal. However, halig despite its transferred meaning is still being pronounced with the long vowel sound ‘a’, as in Harley (without the ‘r’). This pronunciation appears to have changed early in the Middle English period in a series of vowel changes which included the previously mentioned munt to mount when some short vowel sounds were lengthened. Several scholars have described these changes, and among them is the transition of the Old English long vowel sound ‘a’, as in Harley, to a different vowel sounding like ‘aw’. Scholars usually compare it to the vowel sound in law but, having heard this sound during my studies, I prefer to liken it to the same vowel sound ‘aw’ in bought but with a heavy leaning towards the Geordie pronunciation of boat. This new sound was represented in spelling by the letter ‘o’ so that halig/haliw became holig and, like Hollen, it eventually lost its last consonant. These changes, I might add, only occurred in the north of England and the reason why is as yet unexplained. My own personal theory is related to influence from the Viking invasions. Southern England continued to use ‘a’ both in speech and writing and later, towards the end of the Middle English period, we find the first recorded evidence of holy in its present form, translated from the ecclesiastical Latin, sanctus spiritus meaning Holy Ghost in the Wycliffe Bible of 1382. A further change to some long vowel sounds occurred in the following period of Early Modern English (1450-1700) – but this time only in the south, more particularly in the London area. In a process which lasted at least two hundred years, and probably the biggest ever change in the pronunciation of English, The Great Vowel Shift, as it’s come to be known, changed the pronunciation of a special group of vowel sounds – those long vowel sounds which are formed at the back of the mouth, like the ‘a’ in halig. The result was vowel sounds which were formed at the front of the mouth, like the ‘o’ in holy which halig became. This was not, however, the same ‘o’ sound being used in the north. This was the result of a completely different process. The southern ‘o’ sound was the sound we now hear in what we call the Queen’s English, or ‘posh’ English as some call it, when the word ‘boat’ is said. So, for many years we had two different pronunciations of the word holy- one sounded like Queen Elizabeth II, the other like @High Pit Wilma. It’s not really known why this major change occurred. Several theories have been put forward. The redistribution of people due to the Black Plague causing changes in the vernacular of London is one such theory, while the hoi polloi’s struggle with pronunciation of the influx of French loanwords is another. A third is a wave of nationalism which swept over England when French rule finally ceased in the fifteenth century. No one really knows. What we do know is that it added to the confusion and irregularity of English spelling in a very big way causing pronunciation and spelling to diverge even further. Many other languages have undergone a similar ‘shift’: German, Spanish, Latin and French for example, but their nations have, through spelling reforms etc. tried to bring the written language nearer the spoken. In England, there is, traditionally, no regulating body for this sort of thing so the idiosyncrasies, irregularities and difficulties of English spelling remain. Thank heavens for that, I say! Without them we would not be able to see and feel the wings of history in our language. Even though the language is constantly changing, no major changes have occurred since The Great Vowel Shift and for this reason I don’t intend to research our words, Holly, holy and mount, any further. They have, to a great extent, arrived at their modern day form and pronunciation by the end of the Early Modern English period in 1700 AD but, it was some years later that the southern variant of pronunciation became the Standard English pronunciation. This is hardly surprising as the seat of power was London. London had always been part of the dominating dialect area: first on the southern border of Mercia, then included in the East Midland dialect area which was later accepted as the standard variant of English much thanks Caxton’s printing press. There’s a saying in linguistic circles that the difference between a dialect and a language is that a language has an army and a fleet of ships. It’s true! All over the world standard languages have arisen from the adoption of the dialect spoken in the areas of power, administration and finance – the capital cities. Time to move on to Bedlington now and a question: Does anybody know of any map of Bedlington before 1806? If you do I’d love to hear about it. To be continued ….