In a message dated 24/11/2009 12:15:26 GMT Standard Time, glendalight@manx.net writes: Expect they would be making beer, which your man on the street would be drinking in place of unsanitary water in 1700's maybe? Who knows? Personally I would have thought there would be no shortage of decent drinking water in a place like Chatton. I associate the drinking of beer rather than water, for "safety" reasons, as something that applied mainly in towns, where the drinking water supply often came from a polluted river or stream, not the pure Northumbrian spring water the people of Chatton would be blessed with. Of course, beer would be (and most certainly still is!) produced and consumed purely for its own sake, so you could still be correct. However, I was thinking of the illicit whisky stills of which traces have been found in Coquetdale, and of the fact that a large proportion of the families found in north Northumberland were of Scottish origin when I mentioned whisky! Geoff Nicholson