Boglin Marsh went live on 30 November 1999. It is now live again, at boglinmarsh.com, rebuilt from the ground up.
The name Boglin Marsh will mean something to fanciers of a certain age. For everyone else, here is a quick explanation of where it came from.
Where the name Boglin Marsh comes from
Boglin Marsh was a real place before it was a website. It was my dad's back garden in Bispham, Blackpool: the pigeon lofts, a fish pond, flowers everywhere, and the boglin bog itself, which the grandchildren used to throw a penny into and make a wish.
My dad was Steve Spinks, known to everyone in the sport as Spinksy. He learnt about keeping pigeons and the sport of pigeon racing as a boy from a Blackpool fancier called Arthur Gomersall, and he spent years writing for the British Homing World, where his articles about a place called Boglin Marsh built him a following.
In the autumn of 1998 we started building the website together. He had never touched a PC. What he had was an Amstrad that ran the Blackpool Homing Club's accounts and race results and an electronic typewriter for his articles. He wanted to give something back to the pigeon world, and he wanted to learn enough to help me with the web design business I had just started.
He picked it up fast. Within a couple of months he was teaching himself and, on occasion, teaching me. Boglin Marsh became the thing that kept him going. As he put it at the time, he had got his buzz back.
He died on 3 September 2001, aged 57. He had been on the phone to me that night discussing the website.
I wrote a tribute to him then, and it is still here: Spinksy. It ends with that phone call and the words "maybe one day".
The six years after
We had bought the boglinmarsh.com domain in September 2000, moving off the old FSNET ISP web space. After he died I kept it going.
I ran the site for another six years: the articles, the chronicles, the links pages, the weather, and the forum. It won a Golden Loft Award and a GWA award for 2001 and 2002. For a while it was still one of the busiest pigeon sites going.
In 2008 it all came apart. Due to family issues, Tangerine Design folded, I went back to full-time employment, and the site stopped being developed. There was not really a decision about it. There was nothing left to give it.
I hung on to the domain for a few more years, then let it go around 2015. It was picked up almost immediately by people who wanted its history rather than its subject: an SEO operation first, then a Chinese gambling site. For years, anyone typing the address in got something my dad would not have recognised.
That has has not sat well with me ever since.
Why now?
I rebuilt a smaller version on Blogger in 2015, mostly to keep a few of his articles and the tribute page reachable, and that stayed put for another decade.
Two things changed my mind. I saw a feature on the evening news that the sport is dying out. What used to be one federation newsletter and a weekly paper is now spread across club websites, Facebook groups, results services and supplier sites, and there is no single place that points at all of it. That is exactly the job Boglin Marsh was doing in 1999.
The second is simpler. Spinksy was a grafter with a good idea, and it deserves more than an archive link.
What is on the Boglin Marsh site now?
Boglin Marsh always was and is now a directory for pigeon fanciers.
There are currently twelve sections: Community and Clubs, Equipment and Supplies, Events and Shows, Feeding and Nutrition, Governing Bodies, Health and Veterinary, Loft Care, Publications, Race Results, Stud and Stock Lofts, Training and Conditioning, and Weather. These categories cover the RPRA and the Scottish Homing Union, the National Flying Club, the Midland National and the North Road Championship Club. Timing suppliers, including Benzing, Unikon and Tauris. Feed and supplement suppliers, stud lofts, couriers, health information, and the British Pigeon Fanciers Medical Research team, whose work on pigeon fanciers' lung matters to anyone who spends their evenings in a loft.
Publications include the British Homing World, the paper my dad wrote for, and The Racing Pigeon. Shows are listed with their dates, so the Doncaster Show and the Blackpool Show of the Year sit somewhere you can find them.
The Weather section carries the RPRA report, updated each Friday afternoon through the season. The 1999 site had a weather page in its top navigation. Some things have not changed.
You can still see the original at the Internet Archive. It looks its age, but it was, in its day, one of the biggest pigeon sites on the internet.
What I need from you!
The directory is new, and it is not finished; I am adding more entries on a regular basis. If you run a club, a federation, a stud, a shop, or a service, or you organise a show, get yourself listed.
If something here is wrong, tell me. Clubs fold. Secretaries change. Websites move or expire. A directory is only worth using if the details are right, and the quickest way to correct them is for fanciers to point me at what is wrong.
Contact Us: https://boglinmarsh.com/pages/contact-us/
Submit a listing: https://boglinmarsh.com/listings/create/
Twenty-five years ago my dad rang me with his next idea for Boglin Marsh, and I said, 'Maybe one day.' He was 57 when he died. I am 57 now. Make of that what you will. This is one day.
