EMERSON Muschamp Bainbridge, as last week’s column noted, was a farmer’s son from Eastgate, in Weardale, who at 13 was apprenticed to a Newcastle draper and who co-founded what became the famous Bainbridge’s store, now part of the John Lewis group.

Headed “Shopkeeper supreme”, a piece on the Friends of Old Jesmond Cemetery website records that he carried his Methodist principles into business life.

At a time when it was usual to work 15-hour days, six days a week – a bit like Butlin’s Redcoats, then – Bainbridge allowed one night off a week for courting and two if they went regularly to prayer meetings.

Angela Airey, his biographer and great-great-granddaughter, talked on his life last Saturday at Eastgate Methodist chapel. “People seemed to like it, but you never know if they’re being polite,” she reports.

Two matters arise from the original note, the first a call from 82-yearold Norman Kidd in Tollerton, near York, who has traced links with the Muschamp side of the family back to 1140.

They crossed with the Conqueror, became first Barons of Wooler, in Northumberland. “People don’t believe it,” says Norman.

The second call’s from Wendy Acres, in Darlington, who as a student in London stayed at a Methodist hostel – “one of Dr Donald Soper’s" – called Emerson Bainbridge House.

“I’ve always wondered who he was,” she says.

As Mrs Airey points out, however, this is almost certainly the supreme shopkeeper’s third son, a man every bit as remarkable as his father.

The younger Bainbridge, born in Newcastle and educated at Durham University, was – effectively – the man who built Bolsover. He was a mining engineer, Liberal MP for Gainsborough from 1895-1900 and a great enthusiast for the railways.

Among his passions, it’s said, was a coast-to-coast link between Suttonon- Sea (which is in Lincolnshire) and Liverpool (which is a very long way to the West).

Bainbridge was a prominent philanthropist, among his projects a home for waifs and strays in Sheffield, in memory of his wife and – almost certainly – a student hostel in London.

He also owned a 40,000-acre deer forest in Scotland and in 1905 had built a villa near Monte Carlo to serve as a retreat in his later years.

He had made little use of it when he died, aged 65, in 1911.

NO need for Alan Wheaton to dig very far into history. Walking near his home at Stapleton, outside Darlington, he came across – “just lying there” – a bottle with a tale to tell.

Made in Victorian times by Kilner Bros, of Leeds – not, presumably, they of the again-fashionable Kilner jars? – it held soft drinks from W Roome, soda, lemonade and ginger beer manufacturer.

The factory was at the Britannia pub, just off Darlington town centre.

Everyone knows that the dear old Brit was the birthplace of JM Dent, he of the Everyman Library, but how many know that there was Roome at the inn?

William Roome died on November 28, 1898, aged 66, and is buried in the West Cemetery. The Echo appears to have made nothing of it, much of the following day’s paper occupied with an account of the “interesting and pretty” wedding of one of the Pease ladies from Guisborough and with the list of invited guests.

This, presumably, was to differentiate them from those who’d simply walked in off the streets.

Alan’s find, which he plans to give back to the Brit, was made near Stapleton Bank. Though nothing else has shown itself, perhaps it’s a bottle bank, too.

IT’S wholly coincidental that the Brit presently offers a guest ale called Ginger Bear from the Beartown Brewery in Congleton, Cheshire. Congleton, as Backtrack readers will know, is known as Beartown because in medieval times the civic dancing bear upped and died just a few days before the great summer fair.

In need of a terpsichorean replacement, the burghers sold all they had of value – the town Bible.

Fair exchange or otherwise, a new bear took its place.