Matlock Mercury
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| Matlock Mercury | |
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| Type | Weekly local newspaper |
| Format | Tabloid |
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| Owner | Derbyshire Times |
| Editor | Amanda Hatfield |
| Founded | 1940s |
| Headquarters | Firs Parade, Matlock |
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| Website: www.matlockmercury.co.uk | |
The Matlock Mercury is a local newspaper which serves Matlock, Darley Dale, Bakewell and smaller villages in the Derbyshire Dales. It is published weekly on a Thursday.
The Matlock Mercury began life in the late 1940s as Coming Events, an entertainments guide published by Ella Smith from her house on Bakewell Road, Matlock which remained as the newspaper's home until October 2000 when a new office opened on Firs Parade in the centre of the town.
The name "Matlock Mercury"was adopted in the mid-1950s. Sadly, much of the newspaper's archive was destroyed when four feet of water struck during flooding in 1965. The printing works, which shared the same building, until 1996 were also badly damaged. Ella Smith sold the Mercury to John Upritchard in the late 1970s and eventually it was taken over by the Derbyshire Times.
[edit] Don Hale and the Stephen Downing case
Stephen Downing, was a 17 year old with the mental capacity of an 11 year old, who was imprisoned for the murder of Wendy Sewell in Bakewell in 1973. He served 27 years in jail. A long campaign by Downing's family and Don Hale, the then editor of the Matlock Mercury led to the conviction being declared unsafe by the Court of Appeal of England and Wales in 2001 and Downing was released. Hale was voted Man of the Year by the The Observer newspaper, Journalist of the Year by What the Papers Say and was awarded an Order of the British Empire for his efforts, though he was also criticsed for referring to Sewell as the "Bakewell Tart".
The case, and Don Hale's campaign, was featured in the 2004 BBC drama In Denial of Murder in which Stephen Tompkinson played Don Hale and Caroline Catz played Wendy Sewell. [1]
