Don't forget its that time of year again... Wigan Beer Festival.

I visited tonight and as usual there was a fine array of beers on tap. I will also be there again tomorrow night (Fri) if anyone wants to be me a pint.

Can't believe its the 23rd festival. I still have my pint pot from the first one held at the pier! Showing my age now.

For more info visit the Wigan Camra website.

(photo © Dave Green, taken at last years festival).

A new local website has been added to the links page for the Swinley Residents Group.

It is a great site and well worth a look, it contains lots of local info, photos and other stuff. Quite impressive as it has only just launched, I expect this to grow a lot more in the near future.

Visit the Swinley Residents Group website.

I think this is the longest I have gone without updating the blog but there is so much happening.

wiganworld is still being updated daily. Lots of content is being added including news, in court, photos, streets and all the interactive sections.

Still in the process of the re-write... It's a big job because some of the code is over 8yrs old.

Add to the mix some life changing stuff (for me, anyroad), it's all good fun, more on this soon.

Finally, for any Fred Dibnah fans out there - check out this fantastic new song on YouTube - it is well put together, catchy and worth a look.

Fred Dibnah Song

Hope you've all had a great Christmas and New Year, all the best for 2010.

As I've not updated for a while it's time to let you know what's going on at ww. Another re-write is underway, a screenshot (yeah, I know it's small but it's a teaser) can be seen with this post. Good old wiganworld colours are making a return with oodles of info and content on each page.

Lots of new features are planned like PM's (private messages), photo uploads to any section including new photos.

The 'old gallery' will disappear and will be merged with the album - it will simply be called 'Old Wigan'.

Other features include 'watch this photo' and 'view recent comments' etc etc...

I'm not going the whole hog and writing a new facebook... Having said that, if anyone has any suggestions or ideas for the new site, please leave a comment. It could become part of the new site.

Thanks to everyone that has emailed photos over the last few weeks. It's appreciated, there have been some crackers in the Photo-a-Day section.

Finally, the wiganworld streets section has seen many more photos uploaded. Thanks to Rev. David Long and Mick Byrne for lots of pics, and thanks to everyone else that have contributed. As I type this we have over 6,700 street photos and are over 82% complete! I'll be out with my camera when the weather picks up.

Once again, all the best for 2010.

If you have any comment, suggestion or idea please do leave a comment or email me.

Thanks.

Westwood and Howe Bridge cemetery indexes have just been improved.

As with the changes made to Wigan Cemetery Index on 20th October, I've added the same new feature to the other indexes that allow you to click a plot number and this will link to a new page which shows who else is buried in the same plot.

Westwood Cemetery Index.

Howe Bridge Cemetery Index.

Two books of great interest to local historians have been published, with particular emphasis on the Winstanley and Highfield areas.

The first, Founded on Coal, is a whopping 5MB PDF document containing over 90 pages of local history with photos.

The second book, a Further History of Winstanley and Highfield is another PDF document with over 200 pages of interesting reading.

The books were penned by Ray and Derek Winstanley. Sadly, Ray passed away - wiganworld is grateful for Derek's contributions of the books for us all to enjoy. Thanks Derek.

I can't believe the photo-a-day section has been going for over 3 years. Every photo published gets viewed by over 400 people on the first day.

Every now and again I get emails asking how to contribute. If you have taken a good'un, please send it in. Simply email the photo (the bigger the better) to brian@wiganworld.co.uk along with a title, brief description, make/model of camera and your name. I'll do the rest, thank you.

If anyone has received an email from me that is spam, I can assure you that it's not from me. Some bugger is spoofing me!

I have amended the DNS to include SPF (sorry about the jargon, its basically a method to prove that I am the legitimate sender of legitimate email) so any future spam emails should be detected as spam and deleted / junked.

I've added more local links including a useful link for any parent in and around Wigan. It is a Where to Go guide containing lists of events in and around Wigan for kids as well as things to do.

I'm aware that I haven't updated the blog for a while but work is still ongoing with other sections.

To come... more work on the cemetery indexes and more books.

Freda Chorlton has been working her magic again and I've added some more code to the Wigan Cemetery Index to bring 2 major new updates.

1. Due to Freda's hard work and determination, ALL records have a plot number. All 117,918 of them!

2. I've added a new feature that allows you to click a plot number and this will link to a new page which shows who else is buried in the same plot. Should be a useful tool for anyone doing their family research.

To see the new indexes in action:-

Take the image to the right, for example, search for Chipperfield and the plot number along with other details are displayed.

Click the plot number and the Cornish names and another name are displayed.

Just a few points to note:-

Information is provided in good faith based from records transcribed.

If lots of unexpected names appear, you could be viewing a public grave. An asterisk (*) usually indicates a public grave.

Thanks Freda.

View the new Wigan Cemetery (Lower Ince) Records Index.

Ex colliers and miners from the Wigan and St Helens area were invited to attend a special ceremony to see the unveiling of a permanent memorial to their late colleagues and predecessors.

The unveiling took place on the 10th of September and Tony Haslam has kindly submitted some photographs and a brief write-up of the event.

View the unveiling ceremony photos.