Coulston Crofts

[Bayleaf]

On the 18th April 1917 R.E. Leader gave a wide ranging lecture entitled Talks of the Town; Place, Parsons, Publicans and People. to the Hunter Archaeological Society.

Because of the range of topics I've split it into sections by subject, and this is Part1. The lecture is reproduced here by kind permission of the Society.

http://www.shef.ac.uk/archaeology/hunter/index.html

TALKS OF THE TOWN:

- Place, Parsons, Publicans, and People.

BY, R. E. LEADER, B.A.

(A Paper read before the Society on the 18th April, 1917) [1]

COULSTON CROFTS AS A GAME PRESERVE

WITHIN the memory of many of us, on what is now an open space at the bottom of Snig Hill, there stood the Pack Horse Inn, fringed by some smaller tenements. Its site was an island, with streets all around - Newhall Street, separating it from Hollis's Hospital on the east, Bridge Street, intervening between it and Millsands on the north, a short and narrow lane called Colson, or Coulston, Street, on the west.

Its front looked upon the junction of Snig Hill with West Bar. One side alone of Coulston Street survives, and it boasts nothing but three derelict and untenanted little shops, with broken windows, between " The Corner Pin " and a new building at the lower corner. When the street had houses on either side it marked the survival of Coulston Style - as it was still called in 1836 - the old entrance to Coulston Crofts or Fields.

The ancient goyt, or mill race, leaving the Don above Kelham Island, curves southerly at the northern end of Bridge Street to supply the old corn mill of the feudal lords.

Thence it continues by Millsands until it returns to the river at Lady's Bridge. This goyt is one of the most ancient things in Sheffield; Bridge Street follows closely what, when it ran through fields, was its bank. [2]

In my young days this uninspiring thoroughfare was known as Coulston Crofts, the name Bridge Street being more especially attached to the eastern extremity leading to the bottom of Waingate. It is little changed in the main features.

Squalid Love Street and Love Lane (who gave them these inappropriate designations?) still run into it, though no longer fraught with the terrors of the criminal repute that thrilled the childish mind; but what I most miss, apart from unsavoury smells, is the disappearance of the most fascinating mystery of all - a quaint little cottage at the corner where the street turned towards the Iron Bridge.

This, now supplanted by the works of Messrs. Waterfall & Barber, bore the announcement:

" Baths in the Running Stream."

These were commonly known as Brocksopp's, though then kept by a Mrs. Cook, often standing at the portal - a half-door through which one could see, and hear, across a strip of garden, a brown torrent rushing along.

Beyond this the way crossed, by a little bridge over the goyt, not covered as now but then open, to the Iron Bridge, [3] beneath which the sluggish river was wont to display, in sickening numbers, the decaying bodies of drowned dogs and cats.

Up the stream one could occasionally catch glimpses of so-called pleasure boats plying for hire on the dingy marges of Green Lane, where there were also primitive bathing huts.

At the further end of the Iron Bridge were the remnants of the stocks for misdemeanants in Brightside township, and on the hillside opposite, where once had stood the mansion of the Clay family, there arose at this period the station of the Manchester and Sheffield Railway, the trains from which could be seen entering into or emerging from a tunnel under Bridgehouses Wesleyan Chapel and Rock Street. I suppose there are few who know that the passenger station of the Manchester line was there, before Victoria Station was opened in 1851.

And that reminds me that many are too young to recall the small old Midland Station in the Wicker, at the bottom of Spital Hill. It seems almost incredible that up to forty-six years ago, through George Stephenson's obstinate perversity in running the North Midland at some miles distance from all the towns, Sheffield was still at the terminus of a paltry little branch, with a dirty, mean station.

I have been unable to trace the origin of the name Coulston. As a patronymic it is singularly rare here. There was a Joseph Coulson in occupation of Gosnock or Gosnick, otherwise Costnought Hall, nearby, for the Black Swan Inn, on Snig Hill, stands on its site. But that was not until 1749, so it does not elucidate the origin of a designation which had then been in existence for more than a century.

The spelling, as usual, varies. We have it, in deeds, as Colson, Colston, Coulson and Coulston. This last, which has become the present form, has the authority of Harrison's Survey (1637), although twice he gives it as Coulstson.

He also mentions another Coulston Croft, in Upper Hallam, apparently near Snaithing Brook. At an earlier date (1573) we get in the Capital Burgesses' Charters another form :

"the street leading towards Goldstone Crofts."

We learn from Harrison that the Crofts, [4]meadow and arable, were "once parcell of ye Lord's Desmesnes," covering about 36 acres, and then divided into two nearly equal tenures.

One of these was held by Robert Bower, from whose family one of those portions got the name of Bower Spring, but it is to the other half, dealt with in a series of Norfolk Estate deeds, that this introduction to my paper relates.

The deeds begin with 1622, and in the earliest the Crofts are described as

"lying-on the north-east side of a lane (that is West Bar) leading to Ollerton, and south-east of a goyte or stream running to Sheffeild Towne Mill."

Now, if we bear in mind the fact that a scratch golfer, teeing up at the Irish Cross - (that is the top of Snig Hill), could easily drive his ball well on to these Crofts, the covenants imposed on the lessees help us to realize that Sheffield was, even up to the early eighteenth century, a small place, its streets so encompassed by surrounding fields as to be more like a rural village than a town.

If there were not too many trees already growing upon every eleven score yards in length of hedging or fencing, the tenant must plant three oaks, ashes, or elms, and if any of these should die or be spoiled, plant others of like kind,

He must preserve and succour all spring woods and young trees,

Neither he nor anyone with his consent might, shoot, wound, take, kill or destroy any of the birds or beasts of warren, or their young or eggs, nor any fish, but he must, within six days, report any damage done, with the name and residence of the malefactor, to the lord's officer.

He must, in a husbandly manner, spread upon the premises all such manure as is made there, or resulting from the crops, must grind all his corn at the Duke's mills, "being used as a ccustomary in grist and toll ",

Must repair and maintain all water courses and ater banks, and if, in the last three years, he plow above two-third parts of the land, he has to pay at the rate of forty shillings per acre for such excess.

The Duke reserved to himself all rights of hawking, hunting, fishing, and fowling, all timber trees, woods and underwoods, and the herbage of the underwoods, with liberty to cut down and carry away the same , and to dig for coal, stone, or other minerals, and so forth.

Conceive these conditions laid upon land within some 300 yards of the Parish Church. It was, you must remember, the level extending from the foot of the steepest face of the hill which the Church crests, to the river.

Oughtibridge's somewhat crude but informing "Perspective view" from Bridgehouses has Colson Crofts in the foreground. The picture looks straight across them, showing a hay crop, and pasture, and hedges, the goyt, and the cart track which became Bridge Street. This was in 1737.

It may, perhaps, be suggested that the covenants reflect not so much the actual state of Coulston Crofts at the time of their execution as the conservative red-tape of the Duke of Norfolk's Estate Office - an adherence to a settled form of verbiage without consideration of special topographical details.

But there are valid reasons for rejecting this assumption as untenable. The date of the lease just quoted is 1700. It contains, it is true, phrases which are found also in leases granted when Sheffield Park was broken up into farms for agricultural purposes, but these went into far greater detail, scheduling, for instance, the different species of game by name, and to save the cost of engrossing, the indentures were executed on printed forms, with blanks filled up by the pen.

This was the practice about 1672. But the Coulston Croft deeds are not of this kind, they are all laboriously engrossed on parchment by a scrivener, and this, together with variations from the forms specially applicable to the hitherto open land and woods of the Park and Heeley Side, shows that they were drafted to meet the Coulston conditions.

Nor need we question the evidence that there were rights of sporting as to the smaller game, still worth preserving, when we note that at the period when these conditions obtained in Coulston Crofts there was, on the other side of the river at no great distance, a chase wherein deer swarmed and were hunted. Mr. Walter Hall has given us a deed poll showing that as late as 1675 the Lord of the Manor granted rights to take deer in woods of which one came down to the top of Harvest Lane. [5]

These closely encircled the northern slopes of the Don from Wardsend above Sheffield to Hall Car below it, and came within a mile of the Parish Church.

The line of these woods - Scraith, Old Park, Cook, Burngreave (now largely occupied by a cemetery), Hall Car - make a line which is the base of the triangle whose unequal sides are the river, with the apex at Lady's Bridge. One need not be more than middle-aged to remember getting armsful of bluebells in these woods. And look at their sites now!

By 1720 there was some modification of the Coulston Crofts restrictions. The Lord still reserved sporting, timber, and mineral rights, but the tenants' obligations, beyond the payment of rent and proper maintenance, were commuted for liability to one day yearly of

"boon-work[6] with a good draught, when demanded; and to maintain one hound, greyhound or spaniel, when and as often as required."

Trees, underwoods, and so forth continued to be reserved, but if we may trust Oughtibridge, the only timber, a few years later, was in the hedge rows.

There may be some who are inclined to bemoan that Sheffield should have remained so long under a manorial jurisdiction which still exacted suit of mill, and, to a much later period, retained control of the markets, and other affairs affecting the lives of the inhabitants. Hundreds of years earlier, many towns, getting by charter all such matters under their own control, had become self-governing boroughs. But there is another side to the shield, affording no little consolation.

For while incorporation conferred a dignity absent here, it by no means follows that this brought better government. On the contrary, it too generally became the source of abuses from which Sheffield was happily free. It may be said, with some confidence, that towns held directly under the Crown, by taking advantage of impecunious Kings, caring more for their own immediate needs than for their successors, were able to commute Manorial obligations with greater ease than those in the hands of more tenacious feudatory lords. But as time passed, the municipalities thus established, untrammelled by any sentiment of noblesse oblige, assumed the airs of arrogant oligarchies, and exercised their privileges with a severity unknown to the majority of territorial magnates, and worked for the aggrandisement of the few at the expense of the well-being of the many.

Their claims, for instance, to dominate guilds and trade crafts led to jealous strifes for mastery, while their political rights were prostituted to corrupt practices anticipating the American principle of graft, and worthy of the bosses of Tammany Hall.

In Sheffield, on the contrary, among the heterogeneous and autonomous elements conducting its affairs not by systematic co-ordination but by amicable co-operation, there was no one body strong enough to aspire to mastery. Judging by what happened elsewhere, we may conclude that when a Cutlers Company was in course of formation, a municipality would have striven to include in the Act of Parliament some voice in its control, and would have shown none of the Earl of Shrewsbury's complaisance in the establishment of a Corporation wholly free from external interference.

In due time, our mediaeval ancestors' patient contentment under a light feudal yoke brought abundant reward. Towns like Sheffield, Manchester, and Birmingham have proved that the meek inherit the earth. They are now great cities, whilst the pride of the old incorporated towns has been so humbled that many can hardly be said to have grown, and others are derelict.

Notes

[1] This paper is based largely on documents preserved in the Yeomans family, arranged in two large volumes, now in the possession of Mr. Charles Yeoman.They were carefully scheduled by his grandfather's cousin, Richard Yeomans.

[2] There is a plan of 1789 showing a ford over the "Tailgoit" below the Town Mill, on a line from the bottom of Snig Hill to Millsands, and opposite to Water Lane, a small bridge. From another plan (1790) of "proposed streets and lanes through Colson Crofts" we may fix approximately the date of the streets referred to in the text.

[3] Until some two hundred years ago there was no bridge here, foot passengers crossing the river by stepping stones, or "lepings", approached by a "causey" (Sheffield in the 18th Century, p325) In 1726 the Capital Burgesses agreed to allow Mr. Clay £5 "towards ye charge of ye bridge lately erected at Bridgehouses". This was a wooden structure, and so it remained until 1795 when iron was substituted. (H.H.388)

[4] Survey, p82

[5] Miscellaneous Charters, p191

[6] Boon work - 1."Service in kind or in labour paid by a tenant to his landlord, or to the Lord of the Manor." 2. Voluntary help given to a farmer by his neighbour, in time of harvest, haymaking etc." - English Dialect Dictionary 3. "A day's work given by one farmer to another." - Addy, Dialect of Sheffield.

[SteveHB]

1832

Coulson Street area

[RichardB]

An excellent read, Thank you - Thanks from SH to HAS.

Editing Fairy has visited.