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Toftwood Road


deltics

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Hi, wonder if anyone can help me.

I live on Toftwood Road in Crookes, in one of the older terraced houses built in 1903 or thereabouts. I've lived there for ages without noticing this.

Looking up at the back of the house today, I spotted (after 35 years!) that the brickwork on the upstairs storey is different from that downstairs. Different brick, and the horizontal and vertical spacing is different. The lintel over the back bedroom is a different stone than that over the kitchen, and seems to be of poorer quality. It certainly extends less to either side of the bedroom window than does the one over the kitchen.

The house was modernised in about 1980 and a bathroom added, but this is in the middle of the house and so the outer walls are unaffected.

The front of the house is stone and appears uniform.

Were these houses built as single storey ones with the upstairs added later (along with the stone frontage) which might explain the inconveniently placed staircase leading off the kitchen rather than from the front door?

I have the original deeds of this house and the leasehold - I've since bought out the freehold - but they don;t give any clue. Lots about outbuildings, nothing about the house itself!

Anyone got any thoughts or, even better, photos of these houses in the early days?

 

Best wishes

Chris

 

 

 

 

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Hello Chris,

here is a section of OS map, 1952, I doubt it will help, but you never know.

1952 OS map_219.jpg

SH OS map 219.

 

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Hi Steve

Grateful thanks. Doesn't solve the question I'd asked but has resolved another one, the outbuildings before people started getting all middle class and nesh and went for these new-fangled inside toilets and things ... never catch on! Great help and much appreciated.

 

By the way, anyone know why the houses start at 6 on the evens and 7 on the odds? I'm pretty sure the buildings on Crookes pre-date Toftwood Road, and it's not that the first few houses on Toftwood were pulled down to make way for them. The 1904 map seems to confirm this?

Chris

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Top man. The map I have is slightly later and the first run of houses on the 'odd' side are shown on it, this must pre-date 1903 as mine appears to have been built then (according to the leasehold) and confirms that the even side of the road was built first.

This lock-down may be a pain but I'll come out of it a lot better informed!

Any old photos of the top of Springvale before the Punch Bowl was built?

Grateful thanks

Chris

 

p.s. I've just been out for exercise (!) and to look at a mystery thrown up by the map segment, the fact that Duncan Road extends into what is now Crookes. On inspection and with the benefit of hindsight - always a useful tool - it's clear that the shop on the corner of Duncan Road (currently a florist)( and the newsagent next door (Baxters) are newer than the block of four shops / houses between there and Toftwood Road. So at some time the buildings opposite the top of Toyne Street were removed, Crookes widened (for trams?) and the current shops built. This might explain why Duncan Road starts at No, 4?

Opposite there, south of Toyne Street, the block of shops currently wick with estate agents has a stone on it calling it 'The Market' but no date. Obviously post-1903, and by appearance maybe 1920s. Suggestions?

Chris

 

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Possibly the house was part completed when bankruptcy of the builder happened?

Arthur Bell Hesslegrave of  95 Sackville Road and Walter Hesslegrave of 124 Stannington View Road journeyman masons, lately trading as Hesslegrave Brothers at Toftwood Road and Mona Road, Crookes as builders and contractors, went bankrupt in July 1901. They had started business in 1896 with a capital of about £45 and traded up until February 1901 with debts of £307 12s 10d and secured debt to mortgages of £1997. Their failure was attributed to a lack of capital and inability to sell properties they had built, which were now in the hands of mortgages.  They had kept no records of receipts and payments.

An auction of their assets at Toftwood Road was held on Tuesday 30th July 1901 – included were floor boards, scaffold poles, spars, slate, lathes, flags and other stone, a chaff cutter, a wooden stable and sheds. Also their wooden workshop with a slated roof (17’6” by 22’6”) to include a morticing machine.

 

In an unrelated bankruptcy, in July 1904 seven houses 223-235 Toftwood Road, a quarry and some vacant land were auctioned, being the estate of bankrupt Warrington Slater. He traded with his brother Walter as Slater Brothers, cutlery manufacturers of the Beehive Works, Fitzwilliam Street.  The deeds of the houses had been submitted as security for the firm’s bank account.  The bankruptcy had been caused by the excessive speculation in land and property by Warrington Slater, the cutlery business had been sound.
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Edmund, can you check and confirm the numbers of the houses sold in that July 1904 auction? 223-235 sounds too high for this road, but knock off 200 and we may have solved this mystery?

This is gold dust. Where on earth did you find it?

Off topic but I have just finished a year's work at Edward Pryor & Son whose site is immediately adjacent to the Beehive Works. Small world? Miniscule, more like.

Truly grateful. If we weren't on lockdown I'd buy you a pint! (of Yorkshire ale, naturally!)

Chris

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Here's the newspaper ad.  Details elsewhere states "seven freehold houses, and 3,819 acres of land, situate Toftwood Road and Bolehill Lane, and Stannington View Road, Crookes".  The 1920 map below doesn't seem to help?

1260845532_ToftwoodRoad1904.png.1c9e796a9dd9e5580cd8c5ab5a223438.png

2039736236_ToftwoodRoad1920.png.24cc11dde56de3f2fe1e7a291985e626.png

Hannah Smallwood seems to have bought the properties - and she thought they were in Toftwood Road!

195800909_ToftwoodRoad1930.png.3d6e25c8d5090a8a6d7a1f4218e68d41.png

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Hi Edmund.

Fascinating. I still can't work out the house numbers. The map, as you said, is of little help, and without breaching lockdown I can't check but I think the last of the 'odd' houses on Toftwood Road would be roughly no. 71 before you get to the much later 1930s build over the brow of the hill - obviously not showing on the 1920 map but, very roughly, starting in the right hand margin, south side of Toftwood Road.

The five (?) properties shown as Toft Wood Houses are unlikely to relate to this. They were older and that section of road was never called Toftwood Road.

Is the 1911 census online yet? Or the electoral roll for roughly that period? It would be interesting to see what these houses were numbered when built ...

Curious to note that 223 to 225 are listed as freehold. Mine, when I bought it in 1983, was leasehold and the deeds refer to an 800 year lease starting in 1903. Could the freehold have been sold separately and the houses became leasehold in 1903 when sold to the first residents?

I still reckon that you have solved the mystery of why this house and the neighbouring ones seem to have been built in two waves, but the numbering is bizarre. Is there just a possibility that the numbers refer to plots of land that don't correspond to actual house numbers? Despite several years working in construction, we were always doing industrial projects and i have absolutely no idea how this sort of thing relates to new build houses.

Finally, any possibility of posting the remainder of the advert, Lot 2 on Stothard Road? That might shed some light as the numbering there is broadly parallel to that on Toftwood.

Second pint of decent ale awaits you on your next visit to civilisation ...

Chros

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Here's the full advert, including the Stothard Road property.  Also below is the 1901 Census for 223-235 Toftwood Road

1191928496_ToftwoodRoad1904_full.png.e535204634d844e3a08852ef24e80600.png

1946879366_1901census.jpg.c97d7745bf4a7e500d8b3d352fe8a844.jpg

1482751384_1901census_2.jpg.d4f96ff667fb2f8b9371b09e01b95ef4.jpg

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From a 1952 1:1250 map.

There are nos 223 to 231 on what appears to be Bole Hill Lane. Has there been some renaming of roads, or proposed renaming which never happened?

toftwood or not.jpg

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Most curious. I can only suggest that these were the houses shown as Toft Wood Cottages as the one I'm in wasn't leased until after that. The census shows nos. 7 and 9 and then nothing to 223. But that's a very strange place to build seven houses, well away from any other construction. Do you happen to know if they are shown, or absent from, a map of roughly 1903?

So the block of roughly 19 to 33 may or may not have been started by one builder and finished by another, and almost simultaneously a builder went bankrupt on some houses that are listed as 223 to 235?

What I can confirm is that the numbering of the sales on Stothard does look 'logical,' starting from the Crookes end and being more or less in line with houses bearing the same number on Toftwood.

That's three pints. I'll be going bankrupt too at this rate!

Chris

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MadAnnie - excellent. Mystery solved. The map you have doesn't show the St. Anthony's Road development to the east / southeast of the houses on St. Anthony's Road on the left of your extract. I have to admit I'm surprised as I would have thought they were contemporary to the houses shown, just goes to show how wrong I can be. But there is definitely some inconsistency in the numbering since 223 et seq are not 'logical' either for Toftwood Road or Bole Hill Lane. Off topic, but I see that on the1962 map Duncan Road runs into Bole Hill Lane. It doesn't do this any longer, it's a dead end, and the height difference is significant. There's a flight of steps there for pedestrians now, not a slope.

Edmund - Madannie's reply came in while I was writing to you. Mystery solved, the houses in the auction sale were almost certainly those shown as Toft Wood Cottages on the earlier map. But it's an amazing coincidence that this house was clearly built in two waves and a builder on another plot went broke almost simultaneously.

That's three pints for Edmund and a half for the lady <ducks swiftly!>

Chris

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Having now looked at Edmund's last post a bit more closely I note that it states "Toftwood Road or Bole Hill Lane" for nos. 223 to 235, which I hadn't spotted before I posted the map with my renaming comment.

The numbering does seem rather strange, but if everything was logical it would be very boring for those of us who like a bit of a puzzle.

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Steve - regarding 1925 directory. This seems to back up what I thought about the numbering, 57 may well be the last of the odd numbers before the 1930's development (damn this lockdown, it would only take me ten minutes to check!) and so, reasonably confidently, the houses in the auction were those shown as Toft Wood Cottages on the map and were subsequently given Bole Hill Lane addresses. They have gone now and if memory serves, 223 to 221 is now a block of lock-up garages.

It does show how the neighbourhood has changed, though! You won't find many cutlers, carpenters or leather workers here any longer - just University lecturers, customer service advisors and students, I'd have to walk MILES to get my sheep shears bent ...

Chris, feeling very middle class all of a sudden

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5 minutes ago, madannie77 said:

Having now looked at Edmund's last post a bit more closely I note that it states "Toftwood Road or Bole Hill Lane" for nos. 223 to 235, which I hadn't spotted before I posted the map with my renaming comment.

The numbering does seem rather strange, but if everything was logical it would be very boring for those of us who like a bit of a puzzle.

If you like a bit of a puzzle, then the west side of Sheffield is a good place to start. One of the first things I learned when I came here as a child was that parallel roads diverge ...

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Hi Chris, 

I have only just joined, the site. 
My grandmother lived on Toftwood Road in the Second World War, and her house was significantly bombed at the back, taking out the rear corner bedroom and some other parts of the rear of the house. 
 

I know they continued to live in it many years later, so it was repairable. I wonder if this may be the cause of some of the different brick work you describe, and why the front is ok, a few may have been damaged in a similar way ? 
 

Her stairs were also off the kitchen, as she used to tell use the water from the hose jets when they were bombed,  ran down the stairs, and through the walls into the kitchen cupboards, ruining all the ‘special food’ that had been saved for Christmas.  

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