AS well as dovecotes, we’re unhealthily interested in binks, which are stone benches outside cottage doors on which milk churns were placed, usually so the housewife could turn the contents into butter or cheese.

We reported a couple of weeks ago that in the Coverdale village of West Scrafton that there was a bink and some bee boles (please keep up, everyone by now must now know what a bee bole was).

This must be a tale of onebinkmanship, because, not to be out-done, James Dale emails to say: “We have just moved to East Scrafton into a farmhouse and we have a bink just outside the front door.”

It is a splendid bink, perfectly placed outside the door, and now usefully used for storing wood and keeping boots upright.