RISEBURN is a lost industrial settlement of County Durham. It had, as has been mentioned here, three terraces in a U-shape with a Methodist chapel in the middle. It was about a mile south of Middridge near Shildon, just over the Stockton and Darlington Railway.

Eva Stainsby emails from Ferryhill: "Oh how you made my day, with your mention of Riseburn. My late husband, Ean Munro Stainsby, always maintained he was born at "Riceburn" in January 1932. His father died in 1934, so Ean knew very little and his mother did not talk about him.

"So we could never back up his claim and when he died the registrar could not raise Riceburn on her computer, so for his birthplace she just used Brandon where his birth was registered. But he always said "Riceburn" was near Middridge."

I mentioned in the article, I think, that local people properly called the place Rice-burn. A week or so ago I was giving a talk in Darlington and someone in the audience started talking to me about the "Rice Carr" area if Darlington - an area, of course, that is spelled on the maps as "Rise Carr".

Amongst the Stainsby family possessions is a receipt dated 1920, so the family appear to have been at Riseburn for more than a decade. Ean's non-Durham sounding name reinforces the impression that Riseburn was a place where people looking for work tried to get a foothold in the Durham coalfield.

Don Ferguson has also been in touch. Deep in his family tree is George William Metcalfe who was born in Arkengarthdale in 1868. He married Selina Downes, daughter of the publican in Middridge in 1890, and they were captured on the 1891 census living in Riseburn.

"When we were looking for information about the place in 1996, I had not yet retired and one of my then customers lived and ran a business practically next door to where the village stood; literally, just over the hill. He'd lived there all his life, yet he was totally unaware of its existence," says Don.

Again reinforcing Riseburn's reputation as a transitory sort of place, Mr Metcalfe from Arkengarthdale moved from there to New Zealand.

It is uncertain when Riseburn's three terraces and chapel were demolished, although it seems to have been before the Second World War. Kenneth Kilburn of Eldon Lane was the last resident of Riseburn, though as one house remained standing until 1963 - he still has a rate demand from the Urban District Council of Shildon to prove it!

The one house was spared the ball-and-chain so that a farm worker would have somewhere to live.

"There was just a well for water and oil lamps," says Kenneth. "It was an end house of one of the rows. We had part of it converted into a byre and piggery, but it was condemned as 'unfit for human habitation'."

He finishes his call with this little nugget about another vanished industrial community to the south of Middridge.

"My uncle was the one of the last people out of Eden Pit. He was the caretaker of the community centre which had been the bath where you paid 1d. Everybody had tin baths so you went to the village hall."