If you were living in the Peak District countryside around a hundred years ago, the chances are that you would be following a dual working schedule. Part of your working day would be tending the needs of a dairy herd and maybe carrying out a little ploughing and growing feed crops for those valuable cattle. […]
Celebrity Interview – Billy Ivory
Imagine you’re writing a film and you’re asked who you would ideally like to play the two lead roles. That happened to Nottinghamshire-born screenwriter William Ivory on his last project and he had no hesitation: Michael Caine and Glenda Jackson. When approached both actors astonishingly said they wanted parts in The Great Escaper which was […]
The Lost Houses of Derbyshire – West Hallam Hall
No native West Hallam resident, of course, would acknowledge being resident of Ilkeston – they are fiercely independent folk – but the loss of the hall caused this unexpected expansion, and the man responsible was bullish Nottingham developer and bigwig, Alderman Sir Albert Ball (1863-1946), as with one of two other lost Derbyshire houses (not […]
English Wine Project – Award winning wines from Derbyshire
Derbyshire is a county that produces some of the country’s greatest products and each month we feature one of Derbyshire’s best independent producers. It’s just getting interesting again for Darley Abbey based wine maker, Kieron Atkinson. After a couple of weeks of ‘quieter’ times post-Christmas, Kieron’s gearing up for the announcement of the latest international […]
Walk Derbyshire – Shardlow’s Inland Port and Eighteenth Century Walk
When the eighteenth century Duke of Bridgewater’s fiancé gave him what we might today call the push, he decided that not only was he secretly pleased to be rid of her, but to be honest, he was also bored by London, which took up too much of her time through the London Society she frequented. […]
Steve Orme Interviews – Peter Ireson – Venue Director at Theatre Royal & Royal Concert Hall
“The East Midlands has been a hotbed of entertainment for decades – and Nottingham can rightly claim to be the region’s capital when it comes to attracting big names.” Although acts and tastes come and go, one asset that has remained constant is Nottingham’s Theatre Royal and Royal Concert Hall. Well over half a million […]
Lost Houses of Derbyshire – Haden’s House Cathedral Quarter, Derby
If you were to walk towards the city centre in Derby along Queen Street, you would eventually reach St. Michael’s, an unassuming Victorian church designed by Henry Isaac Stevens of Derby and built in 1857-59 of ridged ashlar blacks to replace its Medieval predecessor, the chancel of which collapsed, rather dramatically, on a summer Sunday, […]
Grindlow & Shatton
By Maxwell & Carole Craven Having enjoyed a delightful wander around these two small hamlets, once part of the enormous parish of Hope, Carole said, ‘I can see why Pevsner forgot about them.’ The two settlements, lying on either side of the same hill (Shatton & Abney Moor) are related to each other only in […]
Will an Electric Bike work for you?
The electric bicycle market is changing rapidly. Only a few years ago most people wouldn’t have considered buying an electric bike. However with changes in ideas and the environmental benefits of buying an electric bike making sense, there is now a strong argument for owning one. For more information and some great deals on electric […]
Walk Derbyshire – Fernilee & The Goyt Valley
The South Manchester town of Stockport gets most of its water from two reservoirs filling the narrow upper reaches of the Goyt Valley near Buxton. It is hard to realise that this was a self-supporting estate with its own coal mines and small industrial estate where gun powder was made. Errwood Hall, the central building […]