It seems odd that a tragic event in Garforth should have a marked effect on the number of visitors and hits on my Parlington history site but whilst viewing the stats and looking at the Google Analytics pages, I noticed that the reason for the upsurge was because many people were searching Google with the following keywords: “Garforth, Murder”, and using those same words I discovered that the Parlington site was listed on the first page of Google, leading to a reference in the unlikely titled “Oddness” section where I relate a tale of witchcraft, the murder of a Gamekeeper, and also the more recent (1975) discovery of a buried corpse near the former lake, below Parlington Hollins!
Murder in Garforth
January 16th, 2012Medieval Cross Near Bramham
January 14th, 2012
Following recent trimming of the roadside hedges, scrub and trees, the old cross which is believed to date back to medieval times, is quite prominent on the roadside, on the left as you progress from Tadcaster on Toulston Lane towards Bramham. It really is great to see something like this, without too much in the way of vandalism afflicting it, just some fairly light scratchings from some people keen to leave their initials for no-one to wonder who they were!
The cross is listed and the following is the listing reference:
I’m Very Tired of the EU!
January 7th, 2012
I have avoided making any comments on this blog about the EU or European Union to give IT the full title, but really we ALL have to get involved, to bring change, or future generations to come will be severely blighted. I could easily add here the words “Soviet Socialist” to prefix the European Union, because that is what it is increasingly becoming. But I will not go down the road of ranting about whether they should be legislating for this or that, and whether we should be letting them, ad nausium.
New Talk: Parlington & the Military
January 6th, 2012
Wounded Soldiers from Lotherton Hospital at Parlington, 1915
The Gascoigne family in the second half of nineteenth century, were like many prominent families of the day, heavily involved in the military and unsurprisingly the young, “Dick” Gascoigne, only son of Frederick and Isabella was introduced to military life early on as a cadet. As the juvenile Captain of the cadets in 1863 aged only 12 he was given high praise by the ladies watching a sham fight organised for the Second West York (Leeds) Volunteers at Parlington. But this paled into insignificance compared to his later exploits in the Sudan war, 1854-55, as he and others attempted to rescue General Gordon. My new talk, “Parlington and the Military”, was tested out on the Barwick in Elmet Historical Society on Wednesday evening. Although I say it myself, it was well received, and the feedback I have had since tells me it is worth adding the talk to my regular portfolio!
Garforth Historical Society
December 23rd, 2011
Garforth, on the east of Leeds, has grown considerably in the post WW2 period and has had for many years a vibrant Historical Society. I was first introduced to the society by the former secretary Ron Sudderdean. Over the last few years I have given talks about Parlington on at least three occasions, each time offering new discoveries. Well today whilst looking at my site stats on Google Webmasters Tools I discovered that a link to the Parlington History Site was coming from Garforth Historical Society this is a new venture for them I’m sure, I hope they can publish much of their collection in time, meanwhile drop by and view the site, don’t forget to bookmark it!
House Rejuvenation, a Small Tidbit
November 27th, 2011My ability to add articles here and more importantly to continue to set out the history of Parlington Hall on my main Parlington site has taken something of a back seat over the last few months as I have been seriously modifying rooms, and rejuvenating the rather tired look of the property we bought last year. So if you have visited and found nothing new, my apologies… always assuming my musings here and my history research on the other are worth spending some time on!
RIP Steve Jobs
October 6th, 2011The end of the
Reality Distortion Field!
That’s what they used to say about your vision, you got the last laugh… arguably the most innovative company ever! and now possibly the world’s largest, some achievement Steve!
A Visit to Derbyshire
September 15th, 2011
Last Weekend we enjoyed a short trip to Derbyshire and after staying at the George Hotel in Hathersage, I can certainly recommend the food, although I did feel at the price it ought to have been top notch! Hathersage itself had a late summer feel about it, but of interest is that the George Hotel, and the village for that matter were a favourite of the great Yorkshire authoress Charlotte Bronte, and her novel Jane Eyre was set in the locale.
Site Down
August 30th, 2011At some point during the evening of Monday 29th or the early hours of Tuesday 30th, this blog went awol! We are now back up and running with an older version of WordPress, apologies for any inconvenience.
Apple & Steve Jobs
August 25th, 2011
Those who know me will have no doubt that I am upset by the resignation of Steve Jobs… heck I’ve been using Apple products since the beginning of the nineties! I bought my first Apple machine in Hong Kong and remember looking at the “Next Cube” at an exhibition as an alternative and wondered whether it represented a better bet, but I stuck with my purchase of the PowerBook 140, I’ve never wavered since, despite some tricky times before Steve Jobs returned in 1997. Anyway its all history now! I’m on my nth Mac, a really slick 27″ iMac Core i7 with a screen to die for [2560 x 1440 pixels] running OS X Snow Leopard and with 16GB of RAM.