Porchester Press

22/08/2025

Gedling Borough Council’s Local Development Plan includes sites for possible development, including Mapperley Golf Course.

21/08/2025

The Great Northern Railway warehouses in Nottingham were built in 1857, but 160 years later the railway was long gone and the warehouses were in ruins. The surrounding area was redeveloped. The old station building became a spa – a cathedral of health and fitness, where beautiful people in designer sportswear exercised in comfort. 

Outside it was a different story. Arsonists set fire to the derelict warehouses, so barbed wire went up to keep people out. But the fact was that people lived among the ruins – invisible people who saw nothing of the millions of pounds that poured into the area. They took drugs to numb the cold. To feel human. Or just to feel nothing at all.

People froze and starved a hundred yards from where others burned off their excess calories and swam in a heated pool. It was hardly surprising that when the murders started, nobody had seen anything. 

I revisit the crimes of Mark Martin, known by some as 'The Sneinton Strangler'.

https://open.spreaker.com/6A5mfhFZpBguqm6a8

20/08/2025

We have to go back over 200 years to the first recorded murder of a Member of Parliament in the UK. In 1812 Spencer Perceval, the Tory Prime Minister, was shot dead in the lobby of the House of Commons. The murder was over a debt, and Perceval is the only serving Prime Minister of the United Kingdom to have been assassinated.

The first assination associated with the Irish Question was in 1882. Lord Frederick Cavendish was a Liberal and the new Chief Secretary for Ireland. He had arrived in Dublin and was walking in Phoenix Park with T. H. Burke, the Under-Secretary for Ireland. Both were stabbed to death by James Carey and others (members of the Irish National Invincibles).

In this episode, we look at two politically motivated murders from the more recent past, and compare how differently the UK and the USA have dealt with the perpetrators.

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/48795355

19/08/2025

A rare mooch around Derby this morning. Hat's off to The City of Derby for their free to enter museum and art gallery

Situated right in the centre of town, it has an exhibition of archaeology, the natural world, military history and a stylish art gallery telling the story of 18th century artist Joseph Wright of Derby.

The military exhibition even featured a section on my father's regiment the Derbyshire Yeomanry.

Nottingham should take note.

I did note that they don't spell Ey-Up properly there either.

18/08/2025

If there's something strange
In your Uncle Sam
Who you gonna call?
(Brain Busters)
If there's something weird
About your Mam
Who you gonna call?
(Brain Busters)

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/the-lobotomist-walter-jackson-freeman-ii-part-1-ice-picks-ego-trips--67364873

17/08/2025

The new Bendigo Building on Bath Street towers over St Mary's Rest Garden and the memorial over Bendigo's grave. A welcome replacement to the abandoned former Royal Mail sorting office, which had operated since the 1960s. The new building is a £70m 13 storey tower with 752 rooms. The bricks are typical Nottingham red colour with contrasting blue.

15/08/2025

In 1832 there was a 20 year old in England who lit up the boxing world with his skills, power and speed.
He was a southpaw with a biblical name of Bendigo.
In 2025 there is another 20 year old doing the same thing, also a southpaw with a biblical name of Moses.
Who’s ready for the weekend?

14/08/2025

Yesterday I presented Nottinghamshire County Cllr John Clarke with a copy of 'Gambling on the Sabbath'. Publication was possible thanks to a small grant from the Councillors Divisional Fund. 

Having edited the story of The Welbeck Rangers for Tim Priestley, I am really chuffed to see it in print.

The soldiers of the Welbeck Rangers may not have won any Victoria Crosses and they were in many ways an ‘ordinary’ volunteer unit, but to call their feats ordinary would be an understatement. These were men who did what they did to the best of their abilities and under appalling conditions.

Unlike many units that fought on the Western Front, there is no memorial to the battalion or the 39th Division in France or Belgium. Thankfully there is a memorial at Nottingham Castle.

Copies available for £12. Postage to the UK is £2.50 Email Tim Priestley at: [email protected]

11/08/2025

Thanks to Geoff Hocking in Australia for sending us this print of Bendigo Mill by S. T. Gill ‘The Goldfields’ Storyteller’
⛏️✨
Gill was an English born watercolour artist who emigrated to Australia at the time of the rough-and-tumble days of the Victorian gold rush.
🇦🇺🪃
In this painting, he captured the scene of a mill (boxing match) at Bendigo’s Creek in 1852 where the gold rush began a year earlier.
Gill roamed the goldfields of the 1850s Ballarat, Bendigo, Castlemaine, capturing life in vivid detail: diggers knee-deep in muddy claims, bustling tent towns, sly-grog shops, and hopeful faces panning for fortune. His watercolours and sketches are more than art—they’re a visual diary of grit, gamble, and gold.
Gill also turned to alcohol and it ultimately led to his early death aged 62.
He died the same year as Bendigo in 1880 and was buried in a pauper's grave. Later a tombstone was erected over his grave that bears the inscription: "Samuel Thomas Gill, The artist of the Goldfields. Born 1818. Died 1880".

11/08/2025

Mansfield Court in Mapperley Park is one of the earliest apartment blocks in the city and the design looks great even today.

09/08/2025

Writer Danny Scott’s memoir, The Undisputed King of Selston, delves into Nottinghamshire's rich mining history from a personal and emotional perspective. Marcus Lawrence delves into the journalist’s newest book, and his deep-rooted, generational connections to the city.

09/08/2025

From Worksop Nottinghamshire to Hopkinton Massachusetts. A transatlantic tragedy.

Mild-mannered, handsome and geeky were all terms used to describe Neil Entwistle.

Yet this British computer engineer was convicted of shooting dead his wife and baby daughter at their home near Boston, Massachusetts.

Entwistle fled the scene, jumped on a plane and ran home to mum and dad. The American authorities caught up with him in London and put him on trial in the United States, where he was found guilty.

Despite the weight of evidence stacked against him, Neil Entwistle continues to protest his innocence, denying any part in the fatal shootings of 27-year-old Rachel and 9-month-old Lillian in January 2006.

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/40544322