MONTHS of painstaking work have brought the past up to date for a group of south Durham historians.

Fascinating information from the late Victorian era has been stored on computer by Crook and District Local History Society member Bryan Richardson, giving researchers instant access to records.

A long injury lay-off from his job at Hunwick brickworks gave Mr Richardson the time to complete the bulk of the work, which involved many hours of recording and collating names, addresses and other facts.

The result is an interactive database that can be viewed on a CD-Rom at Crook Library and in the society\rquote s archive. Maps and old photographs can also be examined at the library.

The society launched the database on Saturday.

Secretary Pauline Bell hopes it will be used by schools and colleges as well as people trying to trace ancestors and locations.

She said: "A lot of people approach us to help them find family members and the streets where they lived.

"This means that we can find them at the touch of a button, saving many hours of going through pages of information.

"It has uncovered some fascinating information about the area at the end of the last century, telling us how many people lived in each house, their age and occupation," she said.

The database has already helped the society make an interesting find. They discovered the great-great granddaughter of Edward Lloyd, of Arthur Street, who wrote The Story of 50 years of Crook Co-operative Society, a 1916 publication that provides a wealth of information on the town and the surrounding area.

Mrs Bell said: "People came from all over the country to work in Crook where there were mines and cokeworks.

"They all brought different skills and had different reasons for coming. The size of their families seemed to depend on the status, the richer they were the more children they had.

"One address in Grey Street had 29 people living there in seven different families. They were possibly shift workers."

Contact the society on www.wear-valley.co.uk, email: p.a.bell@talk21.com