Secret Sand Land
Secret Sand Land
An independent local history website for Southport
My name is David Walshe and I am a proud Sandgrounder who has been interested in local history since childhood. I have been researching the history of Southport (and what existed before) for many years now and the aim of Secret Sand Land is to present well researched & new material, via blogs, books, walks, talks & podcasts! Plus regular content via both my Twitter/X feed and Facebook page, uncovering previously unknown facts along the way. To date, I have self-published two books; ‘Sandy Tracks’, a unique collection of local history based poems, illustrations & historical notes and my second book, 'Ecclesfield: Southport's Forgotten Suburb', both of which have now sold out. I have also had articles published in ‘The Lancastrian’ and ‘Who do you think you are?’ magazines. I can carry out building histories for Southport properties as well as giving public talks and local history walks. These are all advertised in advance via my social media pages. Please get in touch on secretsandland@gmail.com if you or your group would like to know more about any of the above services.
My Story
In 2009 I started work on a family tree project with my Grandfather. When I began to look into my Grandmother’s (Rimmer) line, I started to uncover places within Southport that I had never heard of and that sounded fascinating to me, ‘Dean’s Court’ for example. A book was purchased for me, ‘Southport A History’ by Harry Foster which more than whetted my appetite.
I started to collect books on Southport, as well as maps, directories, pictures, paintings, anything I could get my hands on really! In 2019, after many years of being active on Southport based social media groups and local forums, I started to think about fresh ways of presenting the history of Southport and what existed before. This led to the creation my debut book, 'Sandy Tracks'.
In July 2020, I created the Twitter page, ‘Secret Sand Land’ as I was very impressed by other local history accounts and noticed there wasn’t one covering the whole town of Southport.
This website will feature regular & well researched blogs, whilst also keeping you informed about future publications, some of which I have been working on for a number of years whilst others are more recent and connected to other like minded projects.
(Image below available for purchase from johnrshort@btinternet.com)
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