John North

Ada was born in December 1815, just 11 months after her parents married at Seaham Hall. Those who forecast that the union would never last because they hadn't tied the knot at the nearby Saxon church were promptly proved perceptive.

Byron saw his daughter for only the first few weeks of her life before, as it were, diversifying.

Ada, later Lady Lovelace, became an outstanding mathematician and fell in with Charles Babbage, co-founder in 1831 of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. She and Babbage also used their mathematical genius to study the theory of probability in horse racing. The practical experiments proved disastrous, the only real certainty that they were onto a loser.

"Instead of relieving Babbage of his financial problems, his debts were compounded," the book observes. "Worse was to befall Lady Lovelace, who had to pawn the family jewels to pay off her creditors." Poetic justice, it might almost be observed.

She died from cancer at the age of 36 and is buried next to her father, additionally remembered by a US Department of Defense mechanism.

In 1970 they introduced a new and omniscient computer language. In honour of the babe of Seaham Hall, the Americans called it Ada.

THESE potted biographies, edited by Prof Batho and written by members of the Durham County Local History Society, have little in common except links with the "old" county of Durham - between Tyne and Tees - and that the subjects are all dead.

They have made, says the preface, "a significant but not necessarily high profile contribution to the life of the region."

Just two other women are included in the first selection - Florence Bell, author and ironmaster's wife, whose links were more greatly with the North Riding, and Cassy Harker, Barnard Castle born matron of the Friarage Hospital in Northallerton and from 1962-74 of Darlington Memorial. When she began nursing, leeches and maggots were still in medicinal use - for more on leeches, see below - and nurses had to leave if they married. When she finished, the image was finally outliving Hattie Jacques.

Many of the other entries are for academics, like John Alan Chalmers (1904-67) - "whose brains carried him to science, but whose heart to scouting".

Skip Chalmers, as he preferred the boys to call him, ran scout troops in Durham City, took his charges all over the world and won, posthumously, the movement's second highest honour.

There are assorted architects - the collective noun may be a building, as it is for rooks - a strike of early trade unionists and a vestry of churchmen who include William Hogarth, the first Roman Catholic bishop of Hexham and Newcastle.

Bishop Billy, as affectionately he was known, never left Darlington, where (it is reported) he had "an unparalleled ability to disperse midnight revellers in public houses".

These days, of course, they're all out by 11.20pm which (by happy coincidence) was precisely the time on Tuesday August 25, 1874, that 20-year-old Sam Galbraith - having played cricket and spent the rest of the night out - suddenly decided to put his old ways behind him and found religion on the erratic path towards home.

Galbraith joined the junior class at Brandon primary school, learned his Three Rs, read the bible annually from cover to cover (for some reason, the New Testament twice) and became the workers' champion MP for mid-Durham.

Peter Lee, so good they named a town after him, had a similarly sobering experience in the Lanky House pub in Wingate. Someone may know what happened to it.

Former Billingham town council clerk Fred Dawson is there, too, so much the innovator, it's said, that they nicknamed the town centre Dawson City. Probably it was meant as a compliment.

There are many more. For Durham lads and lasses, it is a wonderful book, and with the promise of more volumes and a cumulative index to follow. This one's 150 well illustrated pages and available for £5.50, including postage, from DJ Butler, 3 Briardene, Durham DH1 4QU.

SINCE "batho" is the Greek root for "deep" - as in bathysphere, and things - it may be considered an appropriate name for an academic. Professor Batho also enclosed Durham Men in the Great War (£9, including postage) and a biography of the Durham churches architect C Hodgson Fowler, which, post paid, is £6.50. It is to the Conference of the True Millennium, however, that our man most urgently takes the plunge.

The four day conference will be "an economical, educational and enjoyable experience."; the four day "tour" which immediately follows it - clearly he is an alliterative genius - "a leisurely look at lovely locations."

Unless interest increases pretty soon, it will also be seriously under-subscribed.

Space precludes details; he shouldn't send such good books. Basically it's based around Grey College, Durham at the end of July, is a celebration of the past 1,000 years and offers half-price bursaries to anyone under 25 thought worthy of one. Gordon Batho, from whom fullest details, is on 0191-374 3497.

STAN Laurel, of course, is another with a Co Durham laugh line. Stan's father was briefly manager of the Eden Theatre in Bishop Auckland; the young Laurel attended King James I Grammar School.

Perhaps that's why Tony Hillman has invited us to join a Sons of the Desert pilgrimage on June 16 - which would have been Stan's 111th birthday - to the Bull Inn at Bottisford in Nottinghamshire, once run by his sister.

"He must many a time have sat there relaxing," muses Tony, a ;leading film historian. "We knew you liked a drink as well...." On June 16, sadly, we shall be wetting the whistle elsewhere.

VERA Robinson, featured hereabouts in February 2000 for her love of Redcar, received the Freedom of the Borough yesterday. So did our dear old friend George Hardwick, who played football for Lingdale and Great Britain. More of George in Friday's Backtrack.

Vera's 87, still amazingly active, received the MBE for environmental services from the Queen Mother - the Queen had chicken pox - in 1972. "I didn't think she'd know anything about me, but we shook hands and she said 'Oh, the school teacher'."

She started at Marske, finished at Grangetown. "My children had never seen a sheep," she says. "That's how my interest in the environment began."

She's still a regular speaker, fund raiser, author and researcher, and has loaned her 342-piece collection of crested china to the Zetland Museum. It started with a single tea cup, "A Present from Redcar" tea cup - yesterday Vera received another.

EDITH Kirtley, another indomitable octogenarian, was in the column just weeks after Vera Robinson. She's the long-serving chairman of the Spennymoor Settlement, once known locally as the Pitman's Academy, and still a stalwart of its Everyman Theatre group with whom she made her stage debut in 1940.

"There are those in the town, still more beyond it, who mistakenly believe the Spennymoor Settlement to be some sort of alimony agreement," that column had begun. Not everyone approved.

On Sunday, June 3, at 2.30pm, 81-year-old Edith opens an exhibition - Way to the Better, the Spennymoor Settlement in Words and Pictures - at Bishop Auckland Town Hall. It runs from the following day until June 23.

JAMES Herriot, known better for his love of football than of cycling, will be remembered at a cyclists' gathering - also on June 3 - in his home village near Thirsk. He'd have liked the story.

Herriot, properly Alf Wight, was on holiday in Wensleydale in 1984 when he came across a couple of bike riders puffing up the lofty moors road between Reeth and Askrigg.

Ever the gentleman, he wound the window, asked if everything was all right and began a conversation with Cyclists Touring Club official Eddie Grainger, from Middlesbrough.

They talked football. Eddie was a Boro fan, the vet famously supported Sunderland. "He was a lovely man, talked of how much he'd like a piece of Roker Park turf. I recognised him at once" recalls Eddie.

Duly acquired, the turf now lies beneath an oak tree at Thirlby, near the foot of Sutton Bank, where Herriot and his family still retained some privacy.

For the past ten years, however, Eddie and CTC colleagues have celebrated the Gormire Gathering - named after the "mystic" and leech-rich lake nearby - with a reunion at Thirlby and a "sumptuous" lunch laid on by the village ladies.

"They were very proud of James Herriot," says Eddie. "There's no doubt they still are."

Newton Aycliffe Pipes and Drums, who in February honoured us with an invitation to become president - it had reluctantly to be declined - are on the verge of their biggest break.

Organisers of a French musical pageant heard them at the Billingham festival and have invited them to lead their own extravaganza, at Roman in the South of France, from August 11.

Almost inevitably, there's a snag. Transport costs will be £2,400 and they're approximately £2,400 short. "We've drawn a complete blank around the town," says drum major Tony Fittes.

Paul Robb, the secretary, is anxious to hear from anyone who can put the wind in their sales. He's on 07765 146780.

....and finally, Darlington's sunlit market square on Tuesday staged a promotion for National Childcare Week - which is why we were slightly surprised to discover entertainment by "Professor" Brian Llewellyn and his brilliant Punch and Judy show. Brian, Newton Aycliffe lad, was happy to explain. "They watch Mr Punch and then they do the opposite."

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