In a message dated 19/06/2009 14:34:16 GMT Daylight Time, jtwalton13@comcast.net writes: On the 1881 census for Tanfield Parish, Town, Village or Hamlet of "Tobson (?) Colliery", Page 24, I have found family of Robert Stewart in No. 105, no street or road named. Head of family is listed as a Coke Drawer, and a son as a Coal Miner. My question is: Would this be a miner's row of houses, owned by the company? Is there any trace of this address left in this village? Hobson (with an "H" at the start) is still a district north of Tanfield village, between Tanfield and Burnopfield. If the address had no specific street name, just "105 Hobson Colliery", then it would almost certainly have been a pit village, with all the houses owned by the colliery company and employment at the pit being a condition of tenancy of the houses. The Durham Colliery Museum web-site should have a good deal of information about Hobson Colliery. Tanfield village itself has never been a pit village and today has a rural, agricultural, air, even though it is surrounded by old colliery sites and by former colliery villages, or the sites of them. Geoff Nicholson