Today is our 8th anniversary. Roseland Online was founded on 1st June 2009 with just a handful of pages and a services section. As your founder editor, I’m flattered you’ve all embraced it so much and am astounded by its growth.

I wouldn’t have dreamed at the time that within just 8 years we’d be entertaining over 356,000 visitors a year (that’s almost 1000 a day), have over 3,500 pages of content from classifieds, services and our fab 12 feature writers and have donated tens of thousands to local causes.

Most of all, though, I’m delighted we’ve been (and still are being) instrumental in helping with the rollout of huge community infrastructures like Superfast broadband locally. As part of the team engaging with BT and the Superfast crew, we’ve managed to take the expected 80{c8c3b3d140ed11cb7662417ff7b2dc686ffa9c2daf0848ac14f76e68f36d0c20} rollout here up to a whopping 95{c8c3b3d140ed11cb7662417ff7b2dc686ffa9c2daf0848ac14f76e68f36d0c20} and we’re about to help connect even more with latest rollout this year.

So thanks so much for your trust, ears and help in making Roseland Online such a success. And thanks, too, to Peter and all our feature writers to whom this humble online magazine would be a shadow of its true potential.

Mark David Hatwood FRSA – Roseland Online Founder Editor