FOR almost 200 years, the notes of George Sanders' musical manuscript lay buried beneath the plaster of a wall - until rediscovered by a builder in the 1970s.

And now the jolly cadences of one of his tunes, The New Road to Rothbury, have been brought back to life by being played to a delighted audience.

The first public performance of the tune in the Caedmon Hall, Gateshead, marked the launch of a project to preserve some of the region's rarest folk music manuscripts, songs and recordings.

Traditional songs and compositions from as early as the 1690s, are being digitised and made available on the Internet for people across the globe. The Folk Archive Resource North East (Farne) project is the first of its kind in the country and is being pioneered by Gateshead Borough Council, the Sage Gateshead and Newcastle University.

As well as music manuscripts, classic sound recordings are being transferred from reel-to-reel tape to digital formats and will be available from the Farne web site. Song, lyrics and photographs will also be included.

Alistair Anderson, artistic director of development agency Folkworks, said: "The start of the Farne project is a milestone in the growing awareness of the richness of our regional culture.

"There are thousands of songs, tunes and stories hidden in small local collections in the North.

"Bringing them together in an easily available form on the web will mean that in a few years, anyone will be able to find songs and music that relate directly to where they live or work."

The project team has made some unusual and rare discoveries.

Rachel Peacock, Farne project officer from Gateshead council, said: "The earliest piece of music we have come across is a manuscript from 1694, which will be preserved forever.

"We have also discovered an old manuscript version of the song The Twelve Days of Christmas from the early 19th Century.

"At this time, there were regional variations of the song, but the Tyneside version of the Twelve Days of Christmas has now become standard nationally, and this is the version we sing today."

She added: "Folk music has been extremely important to us in the North-East as it often provided a way for key events or stories to be reported and passed down through generations.

"For instance, as we were researching the archive we came across a folk song that described how the River Tyne froze in January 1814. Ice was so thick that a fair was held on top of the ice."

Cash for the archive has come from the New Opportunities Fund's £50m UK-wide digitisation programme.

Although the website will not be completed until December 2003, the project has a weblog, available at http://farne.weblogger.com