Smudgeinthebudge

I agree whole heartedly. What a brilliant idea. It could be worker run with profits shared between the members i.e. divi and the workers. (incentive to beat the multi-nationals at their own game) There's a name for this, its called anarcho-syndicalism and I've always loved the idea. You've just got to look at the modern co-op and see how it's lost it's way. Prices, closures, modern over management. A complete restart is what is needed and why not in Bedlington. Who knows, in a hundred or so years they might call them the Bedlington pioneers. It would be a start in revitalising the town because it doesn't have to only be retail it could be industrial, hi and low tech manufacturing and service industries. The possibilities are endless. Just got to convince the young folk that it might be a way forward for their future. A bit of nice altruism would bring some optimism into the place. Not away to make a few folk rich but a way to make everyone better off.

Lovely stuff Canny Lass. That's certainly more convincing than anything I've heard before on the subject. So what we've really got to try and do is find out when the word was first meaning toilet. I will strive on the web during the next few days. I'm a little worried about why I find the subject so fascinating

I think the problem with this area is the fact that there's been too much digging already and I haven't heard of anybody making any Roman finds around Netherton but people digging a bell pit probably wouldn't have recognised a post hole. Netherton is quite a commanding height except for one problem. Before the advent of shire horses and steel plough shares the area may have been deeply wooded and difficult to crop with the prevalence of boulder clay on the surface. I mean Netherton for Nedderton as the village changed it's name with the advent of the postal system during the 1840s so as not to be confused with Netherton in north Northumberland. Anything I know about archeology is from years of watching the time team.

I've just done a little bit of research on Roman sanitation this afternoon and I've found that the Romans used mainly communal toilets even in their houses and in bigger towns they had large public toilets. I'm afraid there was nothing little or cabinet like about them. Plenty images on google. the Roman names for toilets are as follows;- cultus, latrina, latrinum, lavabrum, lavacrum, lavatio, lavatrina, ornatus, secretum of which you can see there are a lot of English words derived from these but no mention of little cabinets. Also the word netty was used all over the northeast coalfield area not just around Bedlington. Bedlington district is special but perhaps not in the Roman sense. A lot of archeology has been lost over the years because of opencast mining especially around Netherton colliery so it's unlikely that anything survives but you never know.The small areas that haven't been touched may one day give up something special but I tend to think it may be neolithic, iron age, or anglo saxon. However wouldn't it be lovely if they found the remains of a roman villa at the village built on the remains of an iron age hill fort.

I remember a whole debate about this years ago in the chronicle I think that it was also on the tv, Look North I think. After all the possibilities had been mentioned (apart from nets) a historian came on and gave his theory about cabinetti as a possibility. My dad saw it and I quote, "What a load of ------- a remember the fly nets in the netties, iverybody had thim when aah was a laddie. Yi could buy thim in the store." Of course he may have been wrong about the name's origin, but he was adamant about the nets. I was undecided but tended to lean toward the nets idea.

Tha was nowt dangerous aboot hingin skinny laddies doon the Francis pit shaft on a plastic clothes line ti git the bords eggs either. Because the railway lines covering the shaft had a gap in them near the middle thi had ti dee a canny bit of climbing aroond ti git to the waals. But they did have safety rope ah suppose.

A more obvious reason why they were called nettys was the fact that when they were earth closets people used to hang nets around them to keep the flies out, but there again maybe the Romans did the same.

Ha Ha you nearly got me with this one!

I bet it will be a corn chandlers and dubbin merchants

I remember the shaft cave in in the fellows drive at Nedderton village. I seem to remember another one at Westlea when I was a bairn. My dad told me, I don't know how true it is, that when he was a young lad working in the Hall pit There was a place where they had little shaft that the management didn't know about that went to bank in a hollow in a field. He said they were the best bait times he ever had, sitting in the sunshine with his marras.

The Shafts at the Howard were numbered 17 and 18 it makes you wonder if there were another 16 in the vicinity.

Thanks for the book Foxy I've had a quick read and it's great. I think it's got one thing wrong though. The author says he thinks Yard row was named as such because it had yards but I tend to think that it was named after the Yard seam as the Yard seam drift was still there when I was a kid after Yard row was demolished. We used to squeeze through the metal gates and take our torches down it as far as we dared go. The entrance was near the pit end of where the Yard row would have been. I think Plessey row was also named after the Plessey seam. Funny enough I spent the sixteen or so years before I retired in surrounded by three high rise blocks of flats at Blakelaw named the Plessey, the Beaumont and the Brockwell towers

Thanks Foxy i would if I knew how to PM.

Look in the Durham mining museum history site and it gives the seams in the Howard and the Francis pit shafts when they were first sunk to the nearest inch but the shaft isn't near as deep than the shafts were before the pit closed in 1974. so therefore there are seams not mentioned such as the 3/4, the Harvey, the Busty and the Brockwell. The book fascinates me, could you tell me when it was published and who by please? I'd really like to try and get hold of a copy.

I remember my dad telling me about me grandad often getting bad kyebbles that were harder to work. It seems that the men drew lots for the kyebble they got for the quarter. Flaas I think in this context it did mean flaws.

Or stebble where they keep the gallowas.

Better if I knew the context of the use of the words but as a Netherton lad that remembers Jack I feel obligated to have a go. A canny Cyevule - The place on the coal face allocated to a hewer (pillar and board mining) I remember it as kyebble which could be translated to Cable. "Ya fethers got a bad kyebble so wi hevn't got much money†Flaas - normally floors Not sure about Clagger men Cleaky mats - clippy mats Blaa could be rest eg "lets have a blaa, Blow, - get your breath backâ€

Sorry to hear about Keith, Alan. My condolences to you and your family.

The huge planet eating, globular monster is pretending to be the moon to lull us into a false sense of security before it attacks!

He's the reason I started wearing moleskins instead of jeans!

A bit off topic but Brooke Bond used to have all sorts of cards in their packets of tea leaves. (Not PG Tips, the other one) Not that far off topic though I did try to smoke the tea leaves.

Was it not "kensitas" that had vouchers in?

Predators and accidents probably played a big part too and the water probably wasn't that clean. It is an old saying that every pound you spend on public health saves a hundred pounds on health care. But my previous post was a joke from a fat man (me)!

Thirty thousand years ago three hunter gatherers sat around their campfire talking. One says, "You know, all our meat is free range. All our fruit and veg is organic, the air is fresh, The water we drink is fresh and clean. We get loads of exercise. So how come we've got an average lifespan of just thirty years?

It's always amazing how life adapts and survives in the most hostile environments. I wasn't joking about the mice and their ability to survive pockets of them may live on because of other lifeforms that went underground with the timber, like those centipedes or things like wood lice. I'm sure there will be a lot of timber still down there. I don't know, only having worked at the pit for two years before joining the army, but I doubt if there was much of the timber salvaged when the pits closed, considering the amount that went down the shaft. Enough to set up micro oasis' of life all over the place. Who knows what might end up down there eventually.