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Wardsend House


hilldweller

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Does anyone have any further details about Wardsend House which used to stand on the high ground behind the now defunct Tetley's bottling plant on Herries Road.

I have an interest in this place as my grandmother used to live in a cottage (Wardsend Cottage) attached to the farm to the west side of the "big house".

The farm buildings were extensive and towards the end of their life used partly as kennels for the Owlerton greyhounds. A firm of monumental masons were based around the back of the house.

I think that the house was built for the Rawsons, tanners and brewers (Rawsons Celebrated Pond street Ales) but occupied by the Oxsprings around the time of WW2. After the war I recall the house being used as some sort of old peoples home.

In the 1950's there were still extensive grounds including a wooded hillside, meadows, a ruined water-mill and two further cottages which still exist, (Wardsend Cottages). More of my family lived in the larger of the two Wardsend Cottages (in fact I lived there as a baby).

The water-mill was a very old brick-built structure without a roof and with parts of the upper walls missing. Within this shell several pig-stys and a stable had been built with a hay-loft over, these were roofed with "wavy tin". At the back of the mill the remains of the wheel lay down in the wheel-pit. The water supply came down from a small pond further up the wood which was fed through a small culvert under the railway embankment from the much larger dam (still existing). I assume that the two dams were a single entity before the railway line was built. I only paddled once in the small pond and the horse-leech that attached itself to my leg rather put me off.

The overflow from the large pond runs into the portal of a tunnel which snakes under Herries Road, through the Five Arches and comes out between the railway line and Rawsons Meadows which in the fifties were sports-fields and allotments. It runs to the south, through another smaller tunnel under the tip where the car scrapyard is now and used to enter the Don by the Livesey Street Bridge.

The tunnel under Herries Road is about 6 ft high and brick-built with a egg cross-section making it easy to walk through without getting your wellies too wet. Just inside the exit portal on the right-hand side was a smaller round section brick tunnel (storm overflow) which ran back up Herries Road. It was just big enough for small kids to run up bent double. At the top was a large sewer chamber located under the junction of Herries Road and Wordsworth Avenue. This contained the overflow weir for when heavy rain surcharged the sewers. However the elf and safety dept at SCWW twigged what was happening and placed a heavy cast-iron hinged door over the entrance to the small tunnel before any of us were drowned, gassed or polluted !

Around 1957 the "big house" was abandoned and we crawled all over it before it was demolished. We used to run around on the roof within the valleys and behind the parapets and even explored the spooky cellars which contained stone chests filled with bleached sheep and cattle skulls (perhaps used to make broth for the old people). The house was very grand with marble busts on the stairs and a mechanical bell system to the servant's quarters.

The site was bought by Tetleys, the big house and farm demolished, the small pond filled in and the old mill taken down. The only thing that remains are the two Wardsend Cottages under the viaduct. The last member of my family to live there died just a few years ago.

As a small child I had an wonderful time playing with my cousins in the woods, feeding the pigs and running in the meadows. The cottages didn't have a mains electricity supply until the Elsworths saw factory was built across the road. The supply was at 240 volts which meant light-bulbs had to be bought from a wholesaler (most of Sheffield was on 200 volts until the late 60's).

Picture Sheffield has photo's of the house and overflow tunnel portal taken before Herries Road was built on a elevated embankment to ease the gradient during the 1930's. Herries Road was built to serve the new estates, before this there was only a small track through the Five arches. To access the photo's enter Wardsend House and Five Arches. I guess the tunnel was built when the Five Arches were erected.

Anyway rather a long post but they were interesting times.

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George Hawksley Taylor (1893)

Mrs Oxspring (1893)

Joseph Edward Oxspring (1925)

From The Personals column in:

FLIGHT AND THE AIRCRAFT ENGINEER

First Aero Weekly in the World.

Founder and Editor : STANLEY SPOONER.

A Journal devoted to the Interests, Practice, and Progress of Aerial Locomotion and Transport.

OFFICIAL ORGAN OF THE ROYAL AERO CLUB OF THE UNITED KINGDOM.

SEPTEMBER 19, 1918.

CAPT. ROBERT OXSPRING, M.C., K.O.Y.L.I. and R.A.F.,

son of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph E. Oxspring, of Wardsend House,

Sheffield, was married on September 11th at the United

Methodist Church, Surrey Street, Sheffield, to GLADYS, elder

daughter of MARMADUKE WARDLOW, J.P., and Mrs. Wardlow,

of West Royd, Sheffield.

Note: Captain Robert Oxspring allegedly used to fly over Wardsend House each year on his mother's birthday.

=============

Marriage Notices from the Wigtownshire Free Press

MACHEN, Charles William - M10/3/1863 - At Oswald Park, on the 10th inst. by the Rev. Dr Park, of St. Andrews, uncle to the bride, assisted by the Rev. T.M. Laurie of Partick, Charles William, son of John Machen, Esq., Wardsend House, near Sheffield, to Mary Weir, eldest daughter of the late Archd. Auld, Esq., of Oswald Park, near Glasgow, (No cards.)

Note: - Wigtownshire is in Scotland

==============

Ecclesfield St Mary burials,

PEACE-William Hobson-18-Sep-1877-Wardsend House-age 49

================

WARDSEND HOUSE Picture Sheffield Link

================

1839 - Hannah Rawson of Wardsend House gave land to build Rawson's Almshouses, Worrall Road.

=================

National Archives

Deeds and copies relating to Wardsend House and property at Wadsley Bridge ACM/SD/712-723 1781-1842

12 deeds Contents: Lease (with plan) to Thomas Rawson, tanner, of the house and tanyard, 1789, and copies of grants of other land at Wadsley to him. Conveyed by Hannah Rawson's executors to the Duke of Norfolk's trustees in 1843. Wills of Burton of Royds Mill.

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CAPT. ROBERT OXSPRING, M.C., K.O.Y.L.I. and R.A.F., son of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph E. Oxspring, of Wardsend House, Sheffield, was married on September 11th 1918 at the United Methodist Church, Surrey Street, Sheffield, to GLADYS, elder daughter of MARMADUKE WARDLOW, J.P., and Mrs. Wardlow, of West Royd, Sheffield.

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CAPT. ROBERT OXSPRING, M.C., K.O.Y.L.I. and R.A.F., son of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph E. Oxspring, of Wardsend House, Sheffield, was married on September 11th 1918 at the United Methodist Church, Surrey Street, Sheffield, to GLADYS, elder daughter of MARMADUKE WARDLOW, J.P., and Mrs. Wardlow, of West Royd, Sheffield.

Too late Richard

I posted that last night . See above. :)

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Hi Hillwller - there are a few images around the area on this thread and also see the link to Stuart's Tetley's brouchure which may be of interest there is a photo of Wardsend House on the 1st or 2nd page.

http://www.sheffieldhistory.co.uk/forums/i...;hl=five+arches

Cheers

Does anyone have any further details about Wardsend House which used to stand on the high ground behind the now defunct Tetley's bottling plant on Herries Road.

I have an interest in this place as my grandmother used to live in a cottage (Wardsend Cottage) attached to the farm to the west side of the "big house".

The farm buildings were extensive and towards the end of their life used partly as kennels for the Owlerton greyhounds. A firm of monumental masons were based around the back of the house.

I think that the house was built for the Rawsons, tanners and brewers (Rawsons Celebrated Pond street Ales) but occupied by the Oxsprings around the time of WW2. After the war I recall the house being used as some sort of old peoples home.

In the 1950's there were still extensive grounds including a wooded hillside, meadows, a ruined water-mill and two further cottages which still exist, (Wardsend Cottages). More of my family lived in the larger of the two Wardsend Cottages (in fact I lived there as a baby).

The water-mill was a very old brick-built structure without a roof and with parts of the upper walls missing. Within this shell several pig-stys and a stable had been built with a hay-loft over, these were roofed with "wavy tin". At the back of the mill the remains of the wheel lay down in the wheel-pit. The water supply came down from a small pond further up the wood which was fed through a small culvert under the railway embankment from the much larger dam (still existing). I assume that the two dams were a single entity before the railway line was built. I only paddled once in the small pond and the horse-leech that attached itself to my leg rather put me off.

The overflow from the large pond runs into the portal of a tunnel which snakes under Herries Road, through the Five Arches and comes out between the railway line and Rawsons Meadows which in the fifties were sports-fields and allotments. It runs to the south, through another smaller tunnel under the tip where the car scrapyard is now and used to enter the Don by the Livesey Street Bridge.

The tunnel under Herries Road is about 6 ft high and brick-built with a egg cross-section making it easy to walk through without getting your wellies too wet. Just inside the exit portal on the right-hand side was a smaller round section brick tunnel (storm overflow) which ran back up Herries Road. It was just big enough for small kids to run up bent double. At the top was a large sewer chamber located under the junction of Herries Road and Wordsworth Avenue. This contained the overflow weir for when heavy rain surcharged the sewers. However the elf and safety dept at SCWW twigged what was happening and placed a heavy cast-iron hinged door over the entrance to the small tunnel before any of us were drowned, gassed or polluted !

Around 1957 the "big house" was abandoned and we crawled all over it before it was demolished. We used to run around on the roof within the valleys and behind the parapets and even explored the spooky cellars which contained stone chests filled with bleached sheep and cattle skulls (perhaps used to make broth for the old people). The house was very grand with marble busts on the stairs and a mechanical bell system to the servant's quarters.

The site was bought by Tetleys, the big house and farm demolished, the small pond filled in and the old mill taken down. The only thing that remains are the two Wardsend Cottages under the viaduct. The last member of my family to live there died just a few years ago.

As a small child I had an wonderful time playing with my cousins in the woods, feeding the pigs and running in the meadows. The cottages didn't have a mains electricity supply until the Elsworths saw factory was built across the road. The supply was at 240 volts which meant light-bulbs had to be bought from a wholesaler (most of Sheffield was on 200 volts until the late 60's).

Picture Sheffield has photo's of the house and overflow tunnel portal taken before Herries Road was built on a elevated embankment to ease the gradient during the 1930's. Herries Road was built to serve the new estates, before this there was only a small track through the Five arches. To access the photo's enter Wardsend House and Five Arches. I guess the tunnel was built when the Five Arches were erected.

Anyway rather a long post but they were interesting times.

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A big thank-you to everyone who has responded to my post. I now know a lot more about Wardsend House and it's surroundings. The thread to Stuart's brochure about the Tetley building was wonderful because of the memories that the photo of the house & meadow brought back.

It was in that meadow about a year before the photo was taken that I had a little accident. I was running through the long grass one evening when my foot caught in a loop of steel re-inforcing bar sticking out of the ground. I threw my arms out to break my fall and broke my arm. My aunt had to take me on the tram to the Royal Infirmary to have a cast put on. Luckily it was my right arm 'so no school work for a while !

The photo also shows the cart track that ran along the wood-bottom where my older cousin and I used to ride a pony bareback up and down. The pony belonged to a rag and bone man who stabled it in the mill. He didn't know that his pony was putting in a bit of overtime after tramping around the streets of Sheffield all day.

Also the thread to the 1917 coloured-in postcard was very interesting because it shows the mill with intact walls and a roof. This is strange because I have a copy of an aerial photo from a Sheffield book which dates from around the mid 1930's which shows the mill as a ruin just as I remember it, and even mentions the "ruined bark-mill" in the caption. I think it unlikely that the mill could have depreciated so much in about 20 years, perhaps the postcard photo was taken much earlier.

Once again thanks once again. Where else could I have found so much information in so short a time.

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