That reminds me of a recent book Martin. Ken Follett covers life in a welsh mining village in "Fall of Giants" including the use of names in the way you mention, such as "Dai Pony" (the man who cared for the pit ponies) and others, I think he's probably quite accurate in his descriptions though you would probably know better than me, anyway the books a cracking read if anyone hasn't read it yet.
Back to the pans though, my dad worked at the "Water treatment plant" better known as the sewerage farm, sludge works or even the sh*t works by us as kids when we were growing up in Lancs. Anyway, in his early years a man still came with all the pans he'd collected, and every friday night they would leave the gates open for him so he didn't have to slow his van when bringing them in.
One dark evening they forgot about him and closed the gates, on approach he saw the gates were closed a little too late, the resulting emergency stop and lack of any partition between rear and front of van apparently caused quite a mess
