Thanks for the quick reply, found everything under /var/lib/openhab2/jsondb in my openhabian image 
Probably going to get some flack for this… but I’m very target/outcome led and once i’ve got the google assistant working, I’ll wont be touching the system again… will this work…
… i’m thinking of editing the json files direct, just have putty open next to my winscp and just restart the service everytime I want to “activate” a *.json file edit?
Regarding GA… been reading the google assistant discussion here… Official Google Assistant Integration for openHAB
noticed this reply…
“So then I created an item through paper ui, was able to tag it through the console and got it recognized through google assistant. Excellent. Now update a bunch of tags in my .items files, and tell google to sync device, yes… everything works, all items now show up. Right. Remove item from paper ui, tell google to sync device and I get “an error occurred while syncing openHAB”. Add item through paperui, tag through console, throw in a reboot for good measure and now google can sync device and sees all tags, everything works.”
… Is there a console built into the openhab UI?
Thanks again