LAST week, we also had a wonderful selection of photographs that we believe were taken at the 1964 Durham Miners’ Gala – a year when rain did indeed stop play as a thunderstorm soaked everyone, drowned out the speakers and caused the abandonment of proceedings.

Sharon Cockcroft Marr, of Newton Aycliffe, was there, with her cousins David and Stephen Parker.

“We were there with our Granda, Jimmy Parker, who worked in mines throughout his life including Thornley, Trimdon Grange and South Hetton,” she says. “He was a wonderful man and would take me everywhere with him. He would take me with him to collect his wages at Trimdon Grange and he would walk me around and explain what everything was used for. He’d then take me to the newsagent and buy me The Beano, The Dandy and Topper comic every week.

“We can remember the photo being taken, especially the Coke bottle that my eldest cousin, David, was drinking from – it was empty but the photographer told him to pretend he was drinking out of it for the picture.

“And I especially remember my coat. It was a beautiful bouclé wool, the colour of custard.”

WHO, we asked, was the lady sheltering rather demurely beneath an umbrella on the balcony of the County Hotel during the 1964 downpour? David Walsh, in east Cleveland, spotted that it was Caroline DeCamp Benn whose husband, Tony Benn, we also pictured, although he was braving the rain without an umbrella.

Caroline was a socialist academic, specialising in education, from Ohio, who married Mr Benn in 1949, and is the mother of Hilary, the Shadow Foreign Secretary who was dismissed from the Shadow Cabinet by Jeremy Corbyn last month, triggering Labour’s current leadership turmoil.

AND then we had two men speechifying from beneath an umbrella. They were identified by Michael Morissey in Saltburn and Colin Wild, who back in 1964 was an executive member of the Durham Mechanics Union which was attached to the miners’ union.

Colin says: “The man holding the umbrella is Sam Watson, the Durham Miners leader, and the man under the brolly is Frank Cousins, leader of the Transport and General Workers Union, who ended up in Harold Wilson’s Cabinet. “

Watson was from Boldon Colliery. He was General Secretary of the NUM (Durham) and for 22 years was on Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee.

Cousins, from Nottinghamshire, rose through the transport union, became General Secretary of the TUC and, three months after his appearance at the Durham Miners’ Gala, was appointed Minister of Technology by the new Prime Minister, Harold Wilson.

Next week, we hope to be able to bring you news of the young ladies who were strung across the street beneath the County on the front of last week’s Memories.