Northumberland & Durham historical docs

Ridley of Willimoteswick, senior branch of the Ridleys of N'land, faded into obscurity in the 17c. Even the pedigrees are vague This Chancery case shows the level of debt accumulated over 3 generations from Q. Elizabeth's time, & clarifies the pedigrees davekinggenealogy.co.uk/LocalHistory/H…

@JHCPAL @Catus14 I got as far as his gg grandfather Richard Alder Gofton yesterday while I was on the train, I think he was the one born 1841.

@n_docs @Catus14 I was just about to interrogate Ancestry....

The rare surname Gofton (sometimes mistakenly t/s Goston) pops up around Ponteland 1500/1600s, & sporadically elsewhere in Northumberland. Where did it originate? I came across this farm planning a walk near Wark, which may well be the origin. Originally a denu not a ton @JHCPAL

@cumbriaoldrural @JHCPAL I always recommend chocolate for catching mice, cheese is for amateurs!

@JHCPAL Dad used to tice the mice out with chocolate then catch them

Oh yes. 😁 What do you do with a spelk? Tice it out. OED. Obsolete except dialect. To entice, induce, attract. Probably French.

@Catus14 @JHCPAL I can feel another rabbit hole coming on!

@n_docs @JHCPAL According to his short autobiography, he finally discovered an old family bible inscribed by Richard Alder, dated 9th May 1787. Goftons have had the middle name of Alder since 1841, so he assumes there was a family connection.

@griffitha @SamaHoole Conservative anything is just a load of bull, you had your loooong chance & blew it.

@SamaHoole Conservative plans for honest British-origin labelling will help.

Britain is 110% self-sufficient in lamb. Let that sink in for a moment. Not "pretty good." Not "mostly fine." One hundred and ten percent. We grow more than we eat and export the rest. We have done this on permanent upland pasture that cannot be used for anything else, managed by farmers whose families have worked the same ground for generations, using animals that have been optimised for these conditions over centuries. 85% self-sufficient in beef. 100% in milk. 90% in eggs. The animal products on your plate, if you're eating in Britain, are almost certainly British. The supply chain is: farm, abattoir, butcher or supermarket. Measured in miles. Sometimes in tens of miles. Now. Your January strawberries are from Egypt. Your year-round peppers are from Spain or Morocco. Your salad leaves are from Israel in winter. Your green beans come from Kenya. Your blueberries are from Peru or Chile. They travel by refrigerated air freight, which is roughly fifty times more carbon-intensive per kilogram than road transport, to sit in a plastic clam shell next to a small flag and the word "fresh." The environmental argument against British animal products is not an environmental argument. It is a geography argument made by people who have not checked where their food comes from. Check where your food comes from.

@silverhills64 @SideGallery It’s the present Tynemouth Pier on the north side of the river mouth.

@SideGallery @n_docs Where exactly was this structure please?

⚓ Tyne North Pier, 24 March 1902 The original Tyne North Pier had only recently been completed when storms breached it in 1897, cutting off the lighthouse. It was rebuilt to a straighter line from 1898, and this image captures that work still underway.

@Catus14 @JHCPAL There’ll be an interesting story there. Alder was his middle name & both his grandfather & g grandfather were called Richard Alder Gofton.

@n_docs @JHCPAL She doesn't know the Alder derivation. His family had lived in Whitley Bay.

@Catus14 @JHCPAL Oh there’s a blast from the past, I remember the famous Jim Alder.

@n_docs @JHCPAL I did "race" Jim Alder once (he was about 5000 places ahead of me). I remember when he was mugged and ran after the mugger, kept chasing him without taking a risk for so long the guy gave up through sheer exhaustion

@Catus14 @JHCPAL Did Alder come from a family surname? Another Northumberland surname from way back.

@n_docs @JHCPAL The priest in St Aidans, Brunton Park, who married us was called Alder Gofton

I slipped up, didn’t spot the Carlin Stone & Hill nearby - wonder what the origin of that was? Were Carlin peas grown there? Must admit I always assumed they were only imported dry, but as we always used to say in the programming world, you know what assume makes!

It is so cheerful we're showing it again on #MapMonday! An estate survey of the manor of Rudby 1762, listing tenants of the town garths, from the Falkland (Carey) archive #ExploreYourArchive [ZFD]

Mar 23: Feast of Æthelwold of Farne (†699), hermit. Monk and priest of Hrypis (Ripon) who succeeded Cuthbert in the Inner Farne hermitage in 687. Also April 21.

'North Tyne Valley, near Wark' dated 6th March 1911 by an unknown 3D photographer. How many people can you spot? A Pressphotoman piece on experimenting with three-dimensional composition. pressphotoman.com/2026/03/23/roa…

The actual truth, which people have repeatedly refused when I explain it, is that roughly 25–35 generations back, you are descended from ***every single*** person who was alive in your ancestors' entire region of the world so long as they have any surviving descendants today.

A winter sunset at Coanwood Meeting House, Northumberland

🧵When perusing the England's Immigrants 1330-1550 database I was interested to note the number of people from Iceland in Yorkshire especially around Hull and Beverley. Icelanders in 15th-century Yorkshire were drawn by the booming stockfish trade during the so-called “English

@s8mb Peterlee in Co Durham would like a word.

Crass, unimaginative and, in the case of “Seacole”, desperate. English towns are not named after historical figures - this isn’t America.

Somewhat counter-intuitively, Edinburgh is farther west than Bristol, and Scotland has the westernmost point in the UK (Ardnamurchan).