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For several years, I've completed a Writing Challenge with many people all over the globe. We write something inspired by prompts for 21 days, plus an introduction. This year, the prompts are about place, and I've chosen the River Porter in Sheffield.  These posts touch upon the river's history but they're also about what it means to me.  I'm not following the river in any order except that the first 10 posts are about the Porter Valley and the second 10 posts are about the Porter in the city.  I hope readers will participate and I have a couple of challenges; see the paragraphs in bold towards the end.

The Porter is a little river but it’s also a busy river.  It was happy to play its part in the industrial development of Sheffield and it’s even happier to offer recreation to the people of Sheffield.

But it was a great honour when they asked the Porter to take on the role of the river Styx!  The Porter hesitated because it is such a little river and it would be really hard for Charon to sail his ferry over such shallow water. 

But the businessmen were determined to build a great cemetery hard by the Porter and so they said it would just be like carrying the souls of the departed to the afterlife over a bridge that doubled as the gatehouse to the cemetery.

And so the General Cemetery was born on the hillside with the Porter at the bottom, out in the country and overlooking the hill opposite, where they were building the Botanical Gardens at the same time. 

And lots of famous people moved in from the great (Mark Firth, the steel-maker with his Grade II listed monument) to the good. (Samuel Holberry, the Chartist’s more modest gravestone.  His gravestone may be modest but 50 000 attended his funeral in 1842.  Did they all cross the Porter?)

The cemetery is another place of recreation these days and an oasis for wildlife and open-air storytelling.  One of the mausoleums is a performance space.  I think it was the one we visited in the dead of night towards the end of October 1975, in celebration of my 21st birthday.  It was full of pentacles and so, assuming the presence of Satanists, we ran back home, arriving on Sunday morning at a time before we set out!

Turn your back on the gatehouse and you face Cemetery Avenue.  Back in the day, at the far end, facing the main road, two obelisks stood.  Long gone.  This is the view of the Avenue with the gatehouse behind the photographer:

How might posts of this type be used for marketing?  Think about how you might use this post or a post like it to promote your business.  I add a few thoughts after each post, like this:

This post and the next include a group of businessmen.  They may be the same people or at least some overlap between the two projects the businessmen sponsored.  This was a period when successful businessmen were locals and so saw value in giving something back to the community.  We see this in names such as Firth, who bequeathed several things to the city, eg Firth Park.  These days, ownership of larger businesses is more remote.  These owners rarely visit Sheffield and so would not see so much value in investment in the city.

Small businesses are usually owned locally and it's worth their owners asking what they contribute to their city.  Chances are they already contribute, even though they may not be aware of it.  If you are aware, perhaps it is something you can mention in your marketing?

My other challenge is for Sheffielders.  Do you have anything to share about the Porter?  Your experiences along it, bits and pieces of history you've uncovered, folklore you've heard?  If you remember something, please share it in the comments.  (Or maybe you are more familiar with other rivers in Sheffield, you could share those too.)  Let's see what we can find out over the coming weeks.

This is the thirteenth of 21 stories about the Porter.  The last story was: Metaphor Companion Palimpsest.  The next is: Not to be Sneezed At!

In this image, you can see the Porter or Styx flow below the Cemetery Gatehouse.