IT is amazing what people keep in their attics - but even the most apparently trivial trifle can turn out to be most useful.

In 1969, Colin Marriner was going on holiday and a friend lent him a camera. "He said I'd better take a few practice pictures before I went," he remembers.

Most of the practice shots were of his workplace on Albert Hill, but one was of "the golden gate" at the Parkside entrance of Darlington's South Park.

This gate disappeared sometime during the 1970s, a victim of vandalism. No detailed record or photograph of it survived, which was causing a major headache to the company that was trying to replicate it as part of the £4m refurbishment of the park. Mr Marriner's picture, following an appeal in this column, has enabled the company, Lost Art, of Wigan, to begin the ironwork with some certainty.

"We were just about there with the scrolls and the basic framework, but we would never have got the double ring and the finials in the middle," said Philip van Schijndel, from Lost Art. "This really completes the picture for us."

Former council decorator Dennis Gilligan has also looked out a picture which shows him and Reg Smith repainting the gates - something that happened every four years. He recalls that they were painted Buckingham green with the details picked out in gold leaf.

IT is also amazing what fascinates people. A few weeks ago, we stumbled on the story of Thomas Firth by way of a mystery bottle. He was a ginger beer maker in Post House Wynd.

Firth bottles seem to be moderately common in south Durham as people from Barnard Castle to Darlington have written in about them.

But what is troubling these people is the small, oval mark near the base of the bottle. It says "Buchan 2 Portobello" or "Gray 4 Portobello".

This is the mark of the bottle manufacturers which we can trace all the way to Edinburgh, to a small seaside town on the Firth of Forth where the were several stoneware potteries.

One was run by the Gray family and the other by Alexander Buchan. Although these stoneware bottles were obviously mass produced, towards the end of the 19th Century, Buchan's started producing decorated tableware which is now highly collectible.

In 1972, Buchan's moved to Crieff in Perthshire where it now has a visitors' centre.

The only remaining mystery, then, is the number which appears in the middle of the manufacturers' mark