I'VE had a couple of queries about the map of South Church which was used in last week's Memories.

As I mentioned in today's paper, some people think Adelaide Colliery should have been placed further up the bank near Shildon.

Alan Bell writes: "I lived in Auckland Park from 1937 to 1961 and although Black Boy colliery was no longer there the area to the east of Auckland Park towards Coundon was always known as Black Boy as the pit was said to have been there. If this is the case then the map showing the positions of Auckland Park pit and Black Boy pit isn’t correct."

The map isn't supposed to be perfectly precise, but it should be right. My info came from the brilliant Durham Mining Museum website. It says that Black Boy (NZ225285) was very slightly to the west of Auckland Park (NZ227285), which is what the map shows.

Pits and shafts and names seem to shift all the time, so I'm probably never going to get it completely right. It could be that that whole ridge was known as Black Boy (as this name is older than the industrial era) and so when the first pit was sunk there in 1830 they naturally called it Black Boy.

(Incidentally, I reckon Black Boy as a name is as old as the hills, and probably refers to how the winning of coal left the appearance of the collier. I think there is at least one more Black Boy in the Durham coalfield, but I can't recall where.) Then in 1864, when they sunk a second pit they had to think of a different name and so even though this one was closer to the centre of Black Boy they couldn't call it Black Boy, and so they opted for Auckland Park.

=================================================== WHILE I'm on the subject of South Church, Christine Armstrong (nee Graham) emailed this observation: "In the late 1950s, I was a member of a Girl Guide troup that met in a hall in South Church. The Guide leader was a lady called Vera Barber.

"I wonder if there there other readers who remember being part of this group and the good times had in that hall.

"Presumably, that building was demolished with the clearances in the 1960s."

Regards Alan Bell