2015 Three years online for Blantyre Project
Yeah! On 1st July 2015, Blantyre Project celebrates being online in Facebook for THREE years! How time flies when you’re having history fun.
It’s been an incredible three years. Over 1,600 articles and posts, over 9,400 people subscribed freely on Facebook page, our site has had constant, daily NEW content, each and every day its been online. With over 3,600 photos of Blantyre people, buildings and events it represents the largest Blantyre pictorial archive, all of which is being recorded and archived directly to Blantyre library. The slogan at the top of our page “Archiving Blantyre’s history” is doing just that, preserving all our memories, photos and stories for future generations.
Having collected history on Blantyre since the 1980’s, I’m always thrilled to see such a massive resource forming. The global traffic landing at the main website at http://www.blantyreproject.com is just phenomenal with the unique hit counter recently just passing quarter of a million visits!
With THREE books now available to buy, much of the content is also available in expanded detail to buy offline, the books now shipped to over a dozen countries around the world! The latest being “The History of Crossbasket” launched in May 2015. I’m not setting out to be “an accomplished author”, I have a daytime responsible job in the Construction Industry, which I love. However, if a few of my books are being read in a couple of decades time, I’ll sit with a sherry each evening, and in my elderly years stop moaning at the futuristic world for a second and smile thinking “I did that.”
Celebration
Seriously though for a moment. To celebrate our third birthday, I’m pleased to announce that I will be posting on Facebook ON the hour, every hour for 1 day only on 1st July 2015 from 7am until midnight. These posts have already been scheduled to appear automatically in advance, as I’ll be at work. Thereafter posts will resume to a couple per day. If you read Blantyre Project here on this WordPress site, you’ll have already seen these scheduled posts.
The Future
I’ve so many exciting things lined up for Blantyre Project. Our small town, keeps surprising me with more and more interesting discoveries. As a result of a recent survey I polled readers on the website, I have no less than 3 new books opened up, working on those drafts on and off and hoping to launch the first small book about a Blantyre historical individual of the 1800’s, later in 2015. They’ll also be another Journey in Time, Volume 3 in 2016 and a real BIG exciting book in 2017, which will see Blantyre described factually in the most definitive manner ever written. If you want to know anything about Blantyre past or present, I promise you’ll turn to this 2017 book! Of course, this is all being done in my spare time. Evenings and weekends, mostly. The best bit about Blantyre Project so far has definitely been meeting some amazing local people. Kind people, with incredible knowledge of our local history. I have made new friends and trusted contacts and feel sincerely thankful for that alone.
Thank you to everybody who reads the daily articles, or who has taken time to send in photos or stories. I’ll leave you with a little strapline that appears in my books:
“Without the warm stories of Blantyre’s history and heritage, without unconditional kindness to neighbours and creating a sense of community pride and understanding that this is where we are from, we would truly have nothing of any real, lasting value to pass to our children.”