I READ the feature about the up-coming attractions at Beamish Museum, for the Easter holidays (April 14) and I was very happy to see that jarping was to be included.

I was brought up in Grange Villa, mnear Chester-le-Street, during the 1950s and 60s and can testify to jarping being popular then.

However, when talking to people, over the past 20 years or so, I began to think that I was the only person who remembered this tradition and even very word of 'jarping'.

I have not head if it for about 50 years.

So I was very pleased to hear the museum was revising the said tradition. I wonder how many other local traditions have not been heard about in recent years?

In Grange Villa, jarping was a communal affair I can remember people of all ages gathering near the Mission Church on Front Street. It was mostly the children who jarped eggs, but some times adults did too. You decorated your egg for the Easter competition at church, then jarped it when church was finished. I can remember my grandad, Mr Pringle from the Post Office, carrying a salt seller in his pocket, to eat his egg once had been cracked.

People who were not attendees of the church joined in the jarping. This simple tradition got everyone out of the house and chatting to each other.

We need to revive some of these silly little traditions, because they were not as silly as they sound. They brought a village together, even if it was not related to Easter worship.

I suspect its origins are pagan and the sport came about because of the proliferation of eggs in the spring time. But the word 'jarping' conjures up many happy memories of Grange Villa as it was back then, also, characters in the village, like Auntie Polly, Edna Willis, old Mr Chambers and Ada from the newsagents.

What memories do other readers have about local traditions that have died out, it would be interesting to hear about them.

Helen Smith, Darlington