OUR search for “knocky-up boards” has borne fruit.

It began in Memories 413 when we spotted on an old picture of a mining terrace in Ferryhill that there was a slate beside the door on which had been chalked the time: “9.30”. This was the hour at which the knocky-up man would wake up the miner inside.

Sam Baronowski has very kindly sent in a photo of the knocky-up board on her parents’ house in Brunel Street in Ferryhill. It is made of slate – she refers to it as the “wake-up slate” – and five of the 45 houses in the terrace still have their slates at knock-height beside the front door.

In fact, there is a fine survival rate in the streets around, which were built for Dean & Chapter Colliery workers and are named after industrial inventors: Watt, Kelvin, Faraday, Davy…

Meanwhile, Bill Bowman has sent in pictures of the last three knocky-ups in Broomside Lane in the Belmont area of Durham. Observant readers will notice that they are completely different from the Ferryhill wake-up slates: they are horizontal rather than vertical, they are several inches below knocker-height, and they are made of steel, not slate.

How exciting! Where else should we be looking for knocky-up boards?