Alistair Plant

Celebrity Interview – Paul Jones of the Manfreds

August 26, 2021 Alistair Plant 0

Paul Jones laughs a lot as he happily looks forward to the next few months. The singer, harmonica player, actor, radio personality and television presenter has had a stellar career – yet at the age of 79 he’s going on the road again with the band he made his name with, the Manfreds. Not only […]

Featured

Places Pevsner Missed: Milton

August 26, 2021 Alistair Plant 0

It is exactly seventy years since the late Sir Nikolaus Pevsner’s Buildings of England county guides were first published by Penguin, six years after Sir Nikolaus began work on the research. These invaluable pocket books have been helping us to appreciate what we look at whilst travelling round England ever since. In Derbyshire, we were […]

Featured

Beamish – The Living Museum of the North

August 26, 2021 Alistair Plant 0

Maybe Durham folk have collecting genes in their make-up, but it led three individuals to create two unique museums, one in the Victorian era and the other more recently around fifty years ago. John and Joséphine Bowes used their wealth for the public good, while at the same time indulging their passion by creating […]

Celebrity Interviews

Celebrity Interview – Gaynor Faye

July 1, 2021 Alistair Plant 0

Eighteen months after last appearing on the stage of Nottingham’s Theatre Royal, Gaynor Faye is coming back to the city which she says has a “special place in my heart”. That’s because the 49-year-old actor who is recognisable for stints in two television soap operas began her professional career in the city in 1992. She […]

Lost Houses

The Lost Houses of Derbyshire – Fenny Bentley Old Hall

July 1, 2021 Alistair Plant 0

When travelling to Buxton from Derby, as we did in May to visit the annual Buxton Antiques Fair, we usually go via Ashbourne and the A515 rather than the A6, which is slower, if more direct. This takes us through Fenny Bentley and one of the delights of passing that village is to be able […]

Featured

Sheffield’s Industrial Heritage Brought To Life

July 1, 2021 Alistair Plant 3

The museum was founded in 1982 following a great deal of background work, by Councillor Enid Hattersley, mother of Lord (Roy) Hattersley, one time deputy leader of the Labour Party. The museum is an ideal place to take children, either as family groups or in school parties, a perfect way for them to learn about […]

Featured

Crich Tramway Village

March 29, 2020 Alistair Plant 0

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Recently it has become almost fashionable for major cities to bring back trams to their streets. Some like say Manchester, have done it with the minimum interruption to normal street traffic. There, it was managed by mainly using defunct railway tracks, but in other places the radical idea of reinventing a long gone system of […]

Female

Product Test – Paula’s Choice

March 27, 2020 Alistair Plant 0

Paula’s Choice Calm Repairing Serum, £33 This silky-soft serum soothes sensitive skin and calms redness with a gentle yet powerful blend of antioxidant plant extracts and skin-replenishing ingredients. The concentrated anti-ageing formula minimises the appearance of wrinkles while leaving skin soft, hydrated and calm. What are the key ingredients? SEA WHIP EXTRACT Extract from the […]

Celebrity Interviews

Celebrity Interview – Val McDermid

March 27, 2020 Alistair Plant 0

Her books have sold 16 million copies worldwide, been translated into 40 languages and recently her work topped the fiction, non-fiction and children’s book charts all in the same week. But Val McDermid isn’t sitting back basking in her success: she’s always looking for new challenges. The 64-year-old crime writer is working on her next […]

Lost Houses

Lost Houses of Derbyshire – Hazelbarrow Hall, Eckington

March 27, 2020 Alistair Plant 2

Like Norton, about which I wrote last year, Hazelbarrow – part of Norton in my opinion, but according to Historic England belonging to Eckington – is one of those places which were included in the considerable chunk of our county which was appropriated by the City of Sheffield in 1936 to boost rate income. Hazelbarrow […]