Twisting again

[Dave Angus]

Thanks for your compliments re success of the forum but please don't lose sight of what this website is all about. The forum has taken on a life of it's own where the content of the website is NEVER mentioned or discussed.

Please direct some of your obvious talents and knowledge to improving the website itself .

Please help with captions, collect information on the photographs while there are still folk around who can remember.

Please Email your photographs for inclusion on the site, leave them with your name and address at any of my shops, (they will be returned within 2 or 3 days), arrange to drop them in at my home or we can collect .

Photographs don't have to be ancient, anything at all from the last 150 years which could be of interest to others would be great, your family group shot taken outdoors could be the only shot we have of the street.

If you have nothing to add personally please pester relations, friends and neighbours, make yourself really unpopular. ....... I do..... (like now).

There are currently over 300 visitors to the site every day who do not arrive via a link or search engine, the site has several thousand people who visit regularly, if only a small proportion got involved this website would be amazing.

Please help.
Dave

[RayScollen]

Sorry Dave ... I guess I don't really have anything to offer with regards to actual history so I 'll pop off now and search for a chattier forum ... there must be one out there somewhere. Thanks guys, it's been great.

[Lucy]

thanks for your compliments re success of the forum but please don't lose sight of what this website is all about. The forum has taken on a life of it's own where the content of the website is never mentioned or discussed.

Please direct some of your obvious talents and knowledge to improving the website itself .

Please help with captions, collect information on the photographs while there are still folk around who can remember.

Please email your photographs for inclusion on the site, leave them with your name and address at any of my shops, (they will be returned within 2 or 3 days), arrange to drop them in at my home or we can collect .

Photographs don't have to be ancient, anything at all from the last 150 years which could be of interest to others would be great, your family group shot taken outdoors could be the only shot we have of the street.

If you have nothing to add personally please pester relations, friends and neighbours, make yourself really unpopular. ....... I do..... (like now).
There are currently over 300 visitors to the site every day who do not arrive via a link or search engine, the site has several thousand people who visit regularly, if only a small proportion got involved this website would be amazing.

Please help.
Dave
you could never be unpopular never in a hundred years

[Dave Angus]

Such a pity that one or two people took offence at my post. If I had any objection to chat why would I include a "General Chat" section in the forum? The website would be poorer without chat but the objects of the site should be borne in mind or this opportunity to gather information is lost.

I did not think I needed to state the whole case (maybe wrongly) but on the off-chance that there are more folk out there who think I am out of line, here goes.........

I built this site for the purpose of making my photographs available to the people of the North East.

To collect information on these photographs while there are still folk around who can remember.

To record memories of our town.

To hopefully receive new photographs to fill in the gaps.

To host a website community of people with a real interest in the history of our town.

To this end I have shared around 3000 of my photographs with you (with many still to come) plus a huge amount of information, much of it not available elsewhere. Here I must thank major contributors to the fabric of the site, Brian Slee (all N E towns), Norman Kirtlan (Sunderland), Bob Williams (Blackhall and Horden), Bryan Snowball (Seaham), Len Charlton and Malcolm Fraser for their great help with "out of town" captions, Joan Pace for allowing me to use her mother's life story "Up the Ladder" (apologies to anyone I have missed, I blame the Jack Daniels) and not least, those of you who have also contributed over the last 18 months.

Oh and thanks to John and Kathleen Anderson for their sterling work on Seaham folk in WW1, their input is a valuable addition to the site and they deserve all the help you can give them.

Brian Scollen, Brian Slee and myself have helped dozens of people from home and abroad research their family history with photographs both ancient and modern of both people and places, plus information and a local insight which could not have been obtained elsewhere.... Free.
Check out "Families" on the website nav bar for an example.

Over the last thirty five years the people of Seaham have generously given or loaned me thousands of photographs and shared their knowledge, without this generosity this website would not exist, inexplicably very little material comes in via the site. Six months ago I spent many hours trawling my photographs for portraits for a new Named Faces section, this could be an incredible resource for anyone into genealogy, in all I have probably had 20 or 30 additions sent in, most Seaham folk could contribute here.

In the 1980s there was no other way to give the pictures back other than in books, now we have the internet, instead of continuing to sell you the photographs in a series of local history books I can now make them available to all, free, I do this because of my love of the town and to try and preserve everything possible to do with our local history.

This site is here as a result of thousands of hours work and quite considerable expense, is it wrong that I ask for something in return where possible?

I say again, if you can't contribute and know no-one who can, enjoy the site, if you can contribute, do.

I find it very strange that anyone should object to my asking.

Dave

[Lucy]

You do a Fantastic job and I for one appreciate all that I have learnt from the site. I come in every day ( more than once a day sometimes) and do not get sick of going through all the different sections and when my relations visit I open up the site and leave them to look around, each and everyone of them have had nothing but praise for DAVE AND THE GANG (as I call you).

I don't have a very good memory but going through some of the sections brings things back to my mind.
There are other sites about Seaham on the Internet but this is by far the most superior.

I like that we can send messages etc. to each other in the forum and like the new one much better than the old.
But the main purpose of the Site is building up the History of our town for generations to come.

There are always people who will criticise but on the whole the members here are a good bunch.
Lucy