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Leppings Lane


deejayone

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Leppings Lane is one of those stand-out road names in Sheffield, mainly becoming famous for being the road to the away-end of Sheffield Wednesday's Hillsborough Stadium (and later, the venue by which the Hillsborough Disaster occured).

The name of the road came about from around the end of the 19th Century, when it was simply a dirt-path which had to cross the River Don that runs through Sheffield. In order to get from one side to the other, you had to navigate the 'Leaping' (Or 'Lepping') stones. in the picture below (dated 1881), you'd be looking from what is now the Catch-Bar Lane junction area, down towards the dog-leg near the stadium. Hillsborough stadium itself will be erected towards the top-right area of the picture.

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Imagine you're stood where the Gas shop is now, on the corner - looking down Leppings Lane. The bridge will be now where the river is.

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Nowadays it's all raised as to what you'd see in the picture - so there would be the bridge right in front of you, going over the river. The tire-shop on the immediate left of the picture and the road follows pretty much the same path as it does now (but much wider nowadays).

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The flood was way before the picture.

The river does run stronger nowadays in the absence of the Niagara Dam and weir -but the road was pretty much raised for the building of the bridge, and connecting Middlewood road to it. If you go there now, you'd see how raised Middlewood Road/Catchbar Lane was raised in relation to Leppings lane by looking from the bridge towards the old Cinema/bingo hall - that was built on the level of those roads and Leppings lane was below it.

Also, If you look at the river nowadays too, to prevent flooding, everything around it was built to a safe level above, so effectively the area was built up.

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My grandfather and his brothers owned and worked the J C Allen Forge (their father's forge), which stood at the far end of Leppings Lane and the junction of Penistone Road (not sure if they're still there, but Law Brothers occupied the site of the forge in the early 1960s). The forge was on the river, which was used to provide water to cool the hot forgings)

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