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Crookes Valley Road- The embankment.


Dickdioxide

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Dear forum,

I am trying to find out in which year the embankment which carries Crookes Valley Road was built and by whom.

It was not built for the electric tram (or any horse tram).

It was built many years after the dams as the horse omnibus route to Harcourt Road did not use it-at least originally.

Many years ago I was told that it was paid for by public subscription in the 1880/90s but I have been unable to verify this.

Seasons greetings

RB

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Bit of a negative answer, but it's not on this map dated 1890 http://freepages.history.rootsweb.com/~exy...s/1890maplg.jpg

That narrows it down a bit perhaps. An interesting question though, until I read your post I'd always assumed it was to do with the dams! According to Peter Harvey in "Street names of Sheffield",

"In 1881 a petition signed by 3,115 Crookes ratepayers asked for a new road to replace the old steep and inconvenient road that went down into the valley bottom. 3 plans were considered: improvements to the old road; an iron bridge across the valley; or a new road on an embankment. The embankment plan was chosen and more that 200,000 cubic feet of material was tipped to form the embankment. Throughout the planning stages it was called The Great Dam Road, from the nearby reservoir called The Great Dam, but some people thought this sounded like bad language, so it was changed to Crookes Valley Road."!

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Having one of my occasional trips through the SH archives :) This is an interesting area which i know well, and a question that went surprisingly unanswered. I was walking around the area with andy1702 a couple of months ago and we worked out that the original road level may still exist in the park, between the street and the remaining water that was part of the dam system. Did the alignment of streets change when the new Valley Road was built - it is not easy to picture what it looked like. Also the terraced houses on the other side disappeared in the 50s i think (The Ponderosa) as well as the tunnel from the Bowling Green to the other side of the road which still remains - does that date from before the street level changes?

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A long time ago I read a book from the Central Reference Library that was written by, I think, Keeble Hawson.

If some-one is down that way they may be able to find it.

It concerned the municipal works carried out by the council before 1900.

I'm sure there are references to the building of the embankment. If memory serves me correctly the chap who operated the horse drawn buses was the first to suggest it, and may have made a start, but the idea was then taken up by the council.

Old maps show that the road dropped down to the dam level by Mushroom Lane and climbed back up steeply at the other end.

Behind the bowling green hut is a grating over a large diameter shaft that drops down to the tunnel under the embankment. This tunnel, I think, pre-dates the embankment and was built in connection with the old Great Dam water scheme.

There are various photos of the interior of the tunnel and shaft on the UrbEx website, but I think the "Ponderosa" end man-hole access has now been firmly sealed.

The tunnel is quite big and may possibly have been re-used in WW2 in connection with the barrage balloon site above it on the "Ponderosa".

It seems to have been a venue for "mini raves" in recent years.

HD

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Which Church is that? Is it the one being turned into student flats at the top of the embankment?

The church in the painting still exists but at a date after the painting was done it was much extended to the rear and to the left in a L shape.

The extension to the church took it right up to Crookesmoor Road. This explains why it seems too far down the road. It is the one being converted.

Take a look on Google Streetview.

HD

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I'm a little confused about where hilldweller is meaning by the Ponderosa "

The locals class the " Ponderosa " where the old houses once stood , near the White Rails pub

but the level drop by the side of Mushroom Lane was always called the "Tip " when we played

on there as kids. The Ponderosa came much later and further down field after the old houses

were demolished.

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I'm a little confused about where hilldweller is meaning by the Ponderosa "

The locals class the " Ponderosa " where the old houses once stood , near the White Rails pub

but the level drop by the side of Mushroom Lane was always called the "Tip " when we played

on there as kids. The Ponderosa came much later and further down field after the old houses

were demolished.

According to Wikipedia the entire shebang is now known as "The Ponderosa"

Quoting from it:- "The Ponderosa can be split into two distinct halves, each with contrasting history. The upper part was for many years known as Crookesmoor Recreation Ground, however prior to that it was an area of small dams in open countryside".

So I suppose we are both correct, you referring to the situation as you remember it, and me referring to the present situation.

I have books about WW2 which show the balloon site on the top part of the site on what looks like an ashes covered wasteland and which the council called the Crookesmoor Recreation Ground and which you more correctly called the tip.

When the old houses on the bottom part were being demolished my pals and I used to run riot in the ruins. The cast iron weights out of the window sashes made very good impromptu sledge hammers. I think we knocked down more houses than the council. Happy days !

HD

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Yes it's the Crookesmoor Recreation Ground where the balloon was photographed that we all used

to call the " Tip ". O tha playing ont tip? and most of them who played on there used to live in the

old houses on Wentworth Street etc before being knocked down and grassed over hence the Ponderosa.

You will find the people who grew up there still call the Crookesmoor Recreation Ground the " Tip " and

the neatly grassed over stretch the Ponderosa. There was quite an on going debate about this on the

Sheffield Forum about exactly where the Ponderosa is and how it got it's name.

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Yes it's the Crookesmoor Recreation Ground where the balloon was photographed that we all used

to call the " Tip ". O tha playing ont tip? and most of them who played on there used to live in the

old houses on Wentworth Street etc before being knocked down and grassed over hence the Ponderosa.

You will find the people who grew up there still call the Crookesmoor Recreation Ground the " Tip " and

the neatly grassed over stretch the Ponderosa. There was quite an on going debate about this on the

Sheffield Forum about exactly where the Ponderosa is and how it got it's name.

Indeed - the Information board at the entrance to the park says that locals named it in the 60s after 'Bonanza' - which i am sure is partly true, but who then decides that it becomes it's official name?

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I know one or two in the local pubs in the 60s used to call it Ponderosa as a bit of a laugh

at the beginning so I suppose the word spread and stuck and became official .

They used to have quite a few jokes going on about Bonanza with Little Joe and Big Hoss.

Great days.

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They used to have quite a few jokes going on about Bonanza with Little Joe and Big Hoss.

When the T V series first started I was about the size of Little Joe Cartwright, now I bear a more than passing resemblance to Hoss Cartwright :unsure: .

But that's inflation for you.

HD

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Here's Crookesmoor Road and Barber Moor Lane (Barber Road) in 1853.

No Crookes Valley Road but it is marked as "Dam Wall"

In 1890, before Crookes Valley Road appeared, there was "Great Dam Road" which seems to have run more or less where the footpath through the park is now (ie. at the side of the lake) before swinging back sharply to line up with Winter Street.

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My guess as to why Crookes Valley Road was built on such a high embankment would be to enable trams to climb the hill.

If the original (Great Dam Road) was down in the valley at the side of "The Great Dam" then there must have been an extremely steep climb as it approached the Crookesmoor Rd junction.

Edit:

And of course if that is the case, then a date for Crookes Valley Road would be approximately when the trams started running up to Walkley.

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This seems to be what kicked it off vox

Nice one bayleaf.

Well - at least I got the "getting rid of the steep hill" bit right. :)

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Presumably there wasn't an identified demand or need for more water that would justify the expense of such a large undertaking. The construction of a dam wall would be very much more complicated and expensive than an embankment to carry a road. I don't know the depth of the dam in the park, but I remember some years ago there was a number of incidents during a long hot summer of people jumping out of the boats to swim and being drowned. The parks dept. warned that due to the depth of the dam the water was extremely cold even in hot weather and jumping from a boat was particularly dangerous.

According to Peter Harvey Harcourt Road was built in the 1880's. The map is dated 1890 but would have been based on surveys carried out in previous years, so might Harcourt rd. have been under construction at the time of the survey hence the blank space?

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It doesn't look very deep to me. I had a look a few weeks ago and I'd say maybe 6-8 feet at most. You can certainly see the bottom when you walk round it. That's still deeper than most park boating lakes though, which normally are just deep enough that the boats don't ground.

Apparently it holds 21 million gallons, and at the time it was built it was believed this was enough for any greater expansion of the town (which may explain why the embankment wasn't considered as a dam), and is said to be up to 60 ft deep. As it dams a valley, the sides will be the original contours, so it probably is relatively shallow around the edges, but the centre would be deep.

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It doesn't look very deep to me. I had a look a few weeks ago and I'd say maybe 6-8 feet at most. You can certainly see the bottom when you walk round it. That's still deeper than most park boating lakes though, which normally are just deep enough that the boats don't ground.

I used to fish Crookes Valley boating lake, and there are a lot of areas that reach upto 20 feet in depth, I have read and been told that the deepest area is around 30 foot, but not sure how true that is.

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Are these maps of any interest?

I'd forgotten that I had them although they are not of good quality.

All 1889. . .and too big

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They certainly show the rounded ends of Harcourt Road just as Andy said.

The other end of Harcourt Road, i think now Harcourt Crescent, still has the arch shape which it makes sense would have been replicated at the other end. I come from Brighton which has many 'Crescents' dating from the early to mid 19th century and appear to have been fashionable at that time. I agree with my friend Mr.1702 that it does appear to have originated in that shape. The whole area is interesting!

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