MANY years ago Chilton near Ferryhill was known as Chilton Buildings. Why? - D. Simpson (no relation), Darlington.THE name Chilton goes back to Anglo-Saxon times and means child-ton - the place belonging to a young noble. The original Chilton is the village of Great Chilton which is about a mile to the east of the present Chilton along Chilton Lane.Great Chilton is the home of Chilton Hall, which occupies the site of a Medieval mansion which belonged to the Heron family in 1351.Other settlements or farm buildings surrounding Great Chilton include Chilton Lane and East Chilton, Chilton Grange and Little Chilton. Duplication of place names is familiar in County Durham because obscure agricultural settlements developed into mining towns.I think Chilton Buildings emerged in the 1830s after a pit shaft was sunk in the area, the settlement being named to distinguish it from other Chiltons. Surtees the Durham historian, who lived at nearby Mainsforth does not mention Chilton Buildings in his History of Durham written in the 1820s, but pays attention to Great and Little Chilton.The hamlet of Chilton Buildings first appears on a map around 1840 and began to grow after the development of Chilton Colliery near West Chilton in the 1870s. It quickly outgrew Great Chilton. The name Chilton Buildings still appears on the map in 1954 but because of its size it would be generally known as Chilton. By the time of the 1965 map it is simply called Chilton.DO you have any facts and figures about Baffin Island, one of the world's largest islands, but one about which we seem to know very little? - Brian Greaves, Sunderland.BAFFIN Island is the fifth largest island in the world after Greenland, New Guinea, Borneo and Madagascar. Some argue Australia is the largest island even though it is generally classified as a Continent.Baffin Island lies west of Greenland, from which it is separated by Baffin Bay. It is separated from the Canadian mainland by Hudson Strait. Its small population clusters in settlements like Pangnirtung and Frobisher Bay. There are small airports at Cape Dorset and Cape Dyer.The settlement of Frobisher Bay is on the shores of a large bay of that name on the southern edge of the island. It takes its name from the British explorer Sir Martin Frobisher (1535-94) who was the first European to sight the island around 1576, although Vikings are thought to have visited it in the 11th Century.Baffin Island is itself named after another British explorer William Baffin (1584-1622) who searched the Hudson Strait for a north-west passage to India.Much of Baffin island is covered with glacier ice caps and mountainous peaks rising to 6,750 feet. There are two major lakes - Nettiling with an inlet to the sea and Lake Amadjuak - and two major bays - Frobisher Bay and Cumberland Sound. Around 8,290 square miles of the Cumberland Peninsula is a National Park created in 1972 to protect the Arctic wilderness and marine coastal wildlife.Mining of silver, lead and zinc takes place in the northern part of the island and is in fact the world's northernmost mining activity. The whole island is comparative in size to the Scandinavian peninsula and is 950 miles long with an area of 195,928 square miles. It is nevertheless, like Greenland, one of the world's most sparsely populated regions.If you have a Burning Question, or can improve on any of the answers above, please write to Burning Questions, The Northern Echo, Priestgate, Darlington, DL1 1NF or e-mail dsimpson@nen.co.uk