Touched By History

Introduction

This is going to be difficult, though I am worried that people will post anything in each community to get the ten-dollar bonus, I hope Vocal will be checking on this.

I come from Preston but thirty years ago I moved to Newcastle, so is the fact that I moved part of my personal history, and are people actually bothered about my own personal history?

So I will split this into me in Preston and me in Newcastle and suddenly a few things are flying into my brain about this.

I just completed the Art stary and the most difficult part was not submitting it because there is no community for it at the moment.

St Walburge's Church is a Roman Catholic church in Preston, Lancashire, England, northwest of the city centre on Weston Street. The church was built in the mid-19th century to a design by the Gothic Revival architect Joseph Hansom, the designer of the hansom cab, and is famous as having the tallest spire of any parish church in England. St Walburge's is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a Grade I listed building.

Mike In Preston

I was born and brought up there and spent most of my time in my parents' house Fiddler's Fold until I left. The cottage was supposedly visited by Oliver Cromwell who drowned two monks in a well there. We were unaware of a well until my dad built an extension and then discovered it.

We played with a Ouija board and discovered the monks names, they were father and son, and I wrote about it here.

Grammarly is telling me it should be AN Ouija board, not A Ouija board and I have only just noticed that Ouija is a word that starts with a vowel that is pronounced as a consonant.

Anyway on with history, as your saw Preston has the tallest spire of any parish church in the impressive St Walburgs which I visited once or twice,

I was also close to where the Pendle Witches practised and visited Meg Shelton's grave at Woodplumpton which was covered with a very big rock to make sure she could not rise.

My home football club is Preston North End, who I still support, and they were the first team to win the leagues without losing a match and win the FA Cup without conceding a goal, setting the record number of goals in an English Football match when they beat Hyde United 26-0, so that was a goal every three minutes in that match.

So that is a little of my Preston history, now for Newcastle where I moved around thirty years ago.

Mike In Newcastle

Ten years ago I was part of a chain of light that lit up Hadrian's Wall which was built to keep out the Scots and stretched across the North of England. There is quite a lot of Hadrian's Wall close to me and it ends up in Wallsend where my daughter Juliet lives and there is an impressive installation at Segedunum there. Also, all the signs at Wallsend Metro are in Latin.

My head office is close to Newcastle City Walls and Newcastle still has a Castle. A few years back I took some video from the top which you can watch here.

Mike In Whitby

I will finish this by sharing my walk up to Whitby Abbey, where De=racula came ashore in Bram Stoker's story. The Abbey is now in ruins but still dominates the skyline and every day people climb the 199 steps to see it, although there is a bus that runs there also.

Thank you for being with me on this historical journey.