REPORT ON THE JANUARY 2008 MEETING

Telling Tales on Alston

At the first meeting of 2008 the Alston Moor Historical Society was pleased to welcome a member, Simon Danby, as the speaker for the evening. Simon, in addition to being a professional photographer, has built up a very significant collection of contemporary photographs, stories and sound bytes and this provided the source material for his talk entitled ‘Telling Tales on Alston ’. The collection comprises a wide range of material and has been drawn from many sources over a number of years, including video and sound interviews with residents of Alston Moor. Such local collections exist up and down the country and are very important by way of preserving aspects of life and events times past that would otherwise be lost forever. Topics of national interest have a much better chance of being recorded for posterity and therefore the work of Simon and his peers nationwide cover an otherwise gap in our national historical records.

Simon’s talk, which he referred to as his ‘news-reel’, attracted a large audience, and whilst many of the people featured are no longer with us, they were local characters well-known throughout the area. Some of the events and characters verged on legend (or were perhaps apocryphal!), but nevertheless fascinated a most receptive audience who enjoyed wallowing in nostalgia with which they could identify on a personal level. In isolation each item could be regarded as trivia but collectively presented not merely a series of stories, but a slice of their own personal historical and recollections.

There were many snippets and little gems covering aspects of life in a by-gone are, including:-

• A 102 year old lady from Nenthead reminiscing over life in the mining industry
• Taking a 3-legged stool into the fields to milk cows
• Stories surrounding the famous Wright Bros. bus company which has been operating very successfully from Nenthead for so many years
• Details of a pantomime 40+ years ago which included a catalogue of nick-names attributed to local characters
• Remembrances of the events during WWll involving work at Alston Foundry making munitions

No doubt Simon has many more memories in his archives and it is apparent that we were only able to take a quick glance into his treasure chest. He is continuing to collect material and it is a race against time to capture data from an aging population.

The next meeting of the Society will be on Wednesday the 6th February and will again have a local flavour. Frank Giecco, who runs the archaeological team at the North Pennines Heritage Trust, will be giving an illustrated talk about his work and discoveries on the Nenthead and other Trust sites.