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Phoenix Works


tozzin

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I recently had a look around Ridgeway, mainly to look around the Craft Centre but it seems it's closed, after I left and headed home I realised that this Craft Centre could have been the Phoenix Works, can anyone confirm that it was?

 

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1 hour ago, duckweed said:

I think I've worked it out where the Phoenix Works was, its was the complex of private flats and such just past the Phoenix pub on High Lane as you go towards the right turn down to Ridgeway, I suppose that's where the name "Phoenix" in the  works name came from.

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11 hours ago, tozzin said:

I think I've worked it out where the Phoenix Works was, its was the complex of private flats and such just past the Phoenix pub on High Lane as you go towards the right turn down to Ridgeway, I suppose that's where the name "Phoenix" in the  works name came from.

As confirmed by this 1894 map, from oldmapsonline.org

.A history of the Phoenix Works. Having had a quick read of this I am amazed that it only closed in 1988! Wish I had been paying more attention to local history back then.

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8 hours ago, madannie77 said:

As confirmed by this 1894 map, from oldmapsonline.org

.A history of the Phoenix Works. Having had a quick read of this I am amazed that it only closed in 1988! Wish I had been paying more attention to local history back then.

I think that the building of Phoenix works still survives. My old boss lived in the one shown here with the with his white 4x4 outside, over the hedge from the Phoenix pub. The building was very obviously old with rough stone walls as features inside his lounge. The one closer to the road after the bridge of the H is another house. The Bosses son bought one on the bridge section of the H in Phoenix Court that also looked to be old. I suspect the right hand arm of the H is that on the 1894 map with the offshot towards the pub and the rest of the H are the later additions mentioned in A History of the Phoenix works. 

Phoenix.jpg

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I should know, as almost every time I am in Sheffield I drive past the Phoenix but I suppose that road is so familiar that I don't really notice.

It certainly looks like it was still there last time the Google Streetview car went past in 2012 

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.3350199,-1.3972497,3a,83.9y,149.68h,62.81t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sQjuioACabReMZCULlEap-w!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1

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I was sales manager for a number of years, at a small local steelworks where we produced sickle, hook and machete sections rolled from .43/.48 carbon steel with a manganese content of.60/.80% ( usually melted in Scunthorpe).These sections were mainly sold to T&J Hutton at High Lane,  Ridgeway as well as a smaller quantity to a Dronfield manufacturer. Mosborough and parts of the Moss valley as well as Ridgeway and Dronfield were all involved in producing sickles and scythes, as well as  a number of Midlands companies.

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These are the photos I took yesterday. The B & W photo is from Phoenix Works website, dated around the 1890s.

 

 

 

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Exploding grindstones were an ever present danger for the thousands employed in the dirty, unhealthy grinding occupation. There were many small grinding wheels in the Moss Valley...using water power from the River Moss and all the dams associated with it. Birley Moor is to the west of Mosborough and the grinding wheel referred to was. I seem to think, also known as the "Lower Sickle Wheel" and was jointly owned by T and J Hutton as well as another local manufacturer, whom I had forgotten about, Staniforth's of Hackenthorpe. The site of this is technically in the Shirebrook Valley and was excavated some years ago..

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Grinding was a very dangerous occupation, what with the minute pieces of silica that were thrown up in the mist of water and breathed in by the grinder, no wonder very few died of old age plus the ever present threat of death by the bursting of a stone. A very hard job indeed.

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On 25 August 2016 at 15:44, Old rider said:

I think that the building of Phoenix works still survives. My old boss lived in the one shown here with the with his white 4x4 outside, over the hedge from the Phoenix pub. The building was very obviously old with rough stone walls as features inside his lounge. The one closer to the road after the bridge of the H is another house. The Bosses son bought one on the bridge section of the H in Phoenix Court that also looked to be old. I suspect the right hand arm of the H is that on the 1894 map with the offshot towards the pub and the rest of the H are the later additions mentioned in A History of the Phoenix works. 

Phoenix.jpg

If you look across the road, above the right leg of the 'H', the overgrown area in the corner of the field was the site of the Highlane Silkstone Colliery, sunk in 1880 by Andrew Vardy and closed in 1928. During its years of operation, it supplied the Phoenix Works with the coal required for their steam boilers. Anyone with access to Ken Wain's excellent book on "The Coal Mining Industry of Sheffield and North East Derbyshire" will find more reading and photos of both the colliery and Phoenix Works in the section on "The Sitwells - North East Derbyshire Coalmasters and Ironfounders".

Next time you're driving past, see if you can see the old red brick retaining wall and gate posts of the entrance to the colliery, just by the bus stop..... Photo from google street view....

 

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