IT omes from a pile off receipts. They were written at the time of the First World War and confirmed that John Lee, of Westgate, in Weardale, had paid his bills.

“All I know is that they were on a spike in the attic of a house we used to live in in Westgate,” says Simon Edwardes, now of Rookhope.

John Lee is described on the receipts as a builder and contractor.

He was also a joiner and undertaker, and he was in business with his sons.

Of his wife, we know little, other than in September 1910 she paid 12s 6d to Sandow’s (Patent) Health and Perfect Figure Corset Company in London, and in November 1913 she paid a Stanhope dentist £2 5s for a “part upper denture”.

John Lee is a common name in the dale, but our man may be the same John Lee who published a book entitled Weardale Memories and Traditions in 1950.

The receipts show Mr Lee was active – religiously, politically and physically.

In October 1911, he paid 1s 9d to have “4¾ cuts of timber”

transported from West Hartlepool to be fixed to pews in St John’s Chapel chapel, along with “pitch pine risers and red wood nosings”.

Another receipt, dated April 11, 1912, shows he had five shares in Labour Newspapers Limited, of London, a company formed by the Labour Party and the Trades Union Congress to publish a party newspaper, The Daily Citizen. It lasted only three years.

It looks as if Mr Lee was a pioneering cyclist. In September 1910, from a shop in Narrowgate Street, Alnwick, he bought a Norfolk Cycling Suit for £2 and “1pr cycling hose”

for 4s – can anyone explain what these items are?

Our dalesman was certainly a literary gent. There’s a 1918 receipt from The Cambridge Magazine for 1s 6d for a book entitled The Course of Hannibal, and another from a bookdealer in Paternoster Row, London, for “5 vols on immortality” for 2s.

These volumes appear not to have done Mr Lee much good, although his life lives on long after he has gone through his receipts.