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Black Swan Walk


Sheffield History

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"A lane had always led from Moorhead along the edge of the steep slope down to the water meadows by the Sheaf. This was known in its lower part as Norfolk Lane, and the narrow back crofts of Fargate ran down to its fences or met the back crofts of its few buildings. Between the two roads ran several lanes, jennels, alleys and yards. A lane will admit some traffic; an alley has front doors in it; a jennel runs between the side walls of buildings; but a yard is a weird and wonderful thing. lt begins as the yard of an inn - the middle part of the White Bear Yard still exists as a
jennel behind the Victoria Hall - but gradually, as the thrifty Sheffielders got the uttermost farthing's worth out of the rateable or lettable land, the inns were by
no means the only users of the yards to the right and left of Fargate and High Street. In the King’s Head Yard, now absorbed into Fargate Court, there lurked in 1850 a bakehouse, nine cottages, and Loxley Brothers’ first printing works. The large scale Ordnance Survey map1 is worth pouring over for this area."

Full Document
From the collections of Sheffield Libraries Archives and Information’

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In July 1895 the Church Burgesses Trust charity proposed granting a 99 year building lease at rental £151 per annum, with the lessee to spend a minimum of £5,000 on building, on the land they owned - 464 square yards in Black Swan walk and Chapel walk.

In 1893 there was an Arbitration (relating to street widening) between the Corporation and certain owners of property in White Bear walk. The owners included well known names such as Foster, Atkinson and Cockayne.

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From the Electrical Engineer 1893 - The Sheffield Works Sub-Committee in their report, which was adopted by by the Highway and Sewerage Committee, have considered the Question of the transformer chambers proposed to be constructed by the electric lighting company, and have decided to allow the company to place boxes near the Monolith, in White Bear-walk, the Market place, top of East-parade, Water-lane, Norfolk-street, and the junction of Westbar and Spring-street

In 1888 Pawson and Brailsford had a telephone system installed to comminicate between their High street premises and their warehouse in White Bear walk.

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Back to Black Swan Walk itself - i have walked past this so many times and never walked down, but today myself and Andy1702 explored the old buildings and fittings down there. There is an amazing amount to interest a local historian in such a small space! Firstly a well worn pair of stones on either side of the entrance which Andy says were to protect the corner of the buildings from coach/cart wheels, further down there is a metal rail on the left hand side which seems to be to guide cart wheels along the path, immediately opposite is a fantastic old shop front, reasonably well preserved. At the bottom just before the winch which is mentioned earlier on the thread, there is a turntable on the left which is large, maybe 15 feet across. What was that for?

If anyone is in town go and have a poke around!

We have some photos and will try to upload some soon.

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HI 

 

can anyone tell me why they describe the Black swan walk? when its actually Black Swan Yard? its well documented in national archives, yet i see this generation refer to the site as a totally different name,

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5 minutes ago, Tina said:

HI 

 

can anyone tell me why they describe the Black swan walk? when its actually Black Swan Yard? its well documented in national archives, yet i see this generation refer to the site as a totally different name,

When I'm doing my articles, I look through Sheffield Directories from 1780 to 1911 not consecutive I might add, but you see place and street names spelt different, Broomhill, was Broom Hill, Ringinglow was Ringinglowe, there's plenty more but not having the directories at had these two are just an example. It really annoys me when names that have been used for years are altered for no good reason.

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Although the public generally referred to Black Swan Yard, the Corporation preferred "Walk" all the way since their road widening of High Street and Fargate in 1893 (when the Black Swan was demolished).  Presumably "Walk" sounded classier than "Yard" and as the Corporation had control over signage and legal notices, they were likely to eventually get their way.

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cornelius eddows is recorded to own property in the tax records 1781/83/84 etc buildings and the archives relates to the area as the Black swan yard. it also looks to have had houses on the chapel walk yet i find it hard to find a map that relates to the 1700's et there is a lot of data in tax records for these 2 areas that front the fargate.

what happened to the ownership of these properties does anyone know? did the council take it off them and claim it themselves? in that area 

 

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where was the black swan situated in the black swan yard, i love the history of sheffield especially as my family as demolished the majority along with a few other contractors back then

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knowing sheffield councils destruction it'll not take them long before this history is built over by a concrete metal monstrosity

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