Chippinghouse Road and it’s Environs

[tozzin]

I’m trying to find out just who developed the Chippinghouse Road area, I have an idea the cutlery manufacturer George Wostenholm did own the land BUT may have sold it on in around 1895, but I’m not sure about that, the houses were built on an American design that he saw in Kenwood Village around Oneida lake , in New York State.

George Wostenholm dropped the “ E “ at the end of his name as he considered it to long to etch on his knife blades.

[Edmund]

The 1998 PhD thesis "The development of middle-class housing in Western
Sheffield during the 19th Century" by Nyra Marie Wilson is very helpful.  It's available here: 

Development of middle-class housing in Sheffield

If you do a search for "Wosten" (Control+F) it brings up relevant sections, of which there are many.

Another useful document, which gives details of the various Montgomery Land Societies, which Wostenholm was involved in, is J.H.Stainton's "The Making of Sheffield 1865-1914", and a Word document version of it is here:

The Making of Sheffield

A control+F search for "Montgomery" will find the sections about the Land Society.

A sample: Perhaps most important of all was the Montgomery Land Society, whose operations covered what to-day is known as the Nether Edge district. It was formed by an association of persons in Sheffield for purposes other than gain. Its object was to purchase through its trustees a piece of land of considerable area with a view to dividing the same amongst members of the Society in small plots to be paid for by instalments.  It was under Mr. George Wostenholm's personal instructions that Mr. Steade worked when Montgomery Road, Crescent Road, Kenwood Road and Machon Bank were developed. All this came about when Mr. Wostenholm came back to this country from the States, possessed of a desire "to make of Sharrow another Boston." It was a personal enterprise later when Mr. Steade carried out the same idea in Albany Road, Steade Road, and Upper Chippinghouse Road. He lived for some time at Chippinghouse, Abbeydale Road, but removed to Kenwood Road at a time when "there was springing up a lower class population, another Carbrook," as the newspapers then declared; "a kind of ragged fringe to Sharrow's genteel garment." It was in the 'thirties that George Wostenholm first began purchasing land for the estate which later became known as Kenwood. No sooner had he got his two acres for the estate than he set about acquiring more land, having already beautified his original purchase by verdant plantations, until his purchases extended from Sheffield Moor, up Cemetery Road to Sharrow Moor, with the northerly boundary as far to the north east as Brincliffe Edge.

[tozzin]

I’ve never read this before but it does fill in the gaps I was looking for, cheers Edmund.

[fentonvillain]

Amazing stuff. I lived on Fentonville St which is across the road from Priory Road and delivered newspapers for Allotts of Wolstenholme Rd and bread for Tophams Bakery all around this area without knowing anything other than views of Nether Edge and horse drawn trams from old postcards.  If he could see it now!!!