Recollections Of All Saints Parish.

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This is my neck of the woods, oh to be able to have walk round when this was written!!

John was asked by the Vicar of All Saints, Ellesmere, to write his recollections of the area from his youth in the 1820.

Recollections of All Saints Parish, of Sixty Years Ago

An extract from All Saints Parish Magazine; 1885

By John Hall Esq; (Parishioner)

“To begin with, I will ask my readers to have a walk with me, leaving the Wicker, on the Attercliffe road, the first thing that would strike the passing stranger, was a very beautiful suburban residence, entirely covered with ivy, and surrounded by beautiful grounds and gardens, standing on the very site of the present Midlands goods station. This was then occupied by a Mr. Sorby, who, I believe, was then connected with the works on Spital Hill bearing that name, but now belonging to the firm of Lockwood and Co. “ of this however I am not quite sure.

On the road to Attercliffe, on the right hand and on the left, were innumerable cottage gardens, and the only group of houses I can recall, were in connection with a well known public house, called the Twelve O' clock.

The whole of the hill side, between the Attercliffe road, in the valley, and the Grimesthorpe road on the summit, where Saville Street East, Carlisle Street, and Ellesmere Road now stand with their surrounding pandemonium of forges and furnaces, was either garden, field or uncultivated ground. No railway, no works, no church, and scarcely any inhabitants of any kind. On the right hand side of the road, where the Norfolk Bridge and Attercliffe Road Station now stands, were the beautiful fish ponds, gardens, and pleasure grounds of Thomas Booth Esq; of the Sheffield Blast Furnace and the Tinsley Park Collieries.

Leaving Brightside Lane to the right, there was a very pleasant walk up the hill side to Grimesthorpe Road, through a then picturesque lane, known as Carwood Laane, which ran alongside a large wood, called

Hall Car, which extended over the site between where All Saints Church now stands and the lane alluded to. Hall Car Wood was a charming piece of woodland, covered with primroses, anemones and blue bells in their respective seasons, and ringing with the sound of birds. One year it was said that a nightingale had taken up its abode there, and warbled the night through, during the months of May and June.

Occupation Road in those days, was extremely lonely, and the only house I remember on the roadside, between the present Vicarage and Vestry Hall, was one in connection with some tea and strawberry gardens, half way down on the left side, beside the two already alluded to.

Another fine old wood, which then covered a considerable potion of All Saints Parish, was Burngreave Wood, which extended all the way up from the Vestry Hall, on the right hand side of the road, to the Cemetery on the East and to Abbey Field, (then Pass Houses) on the North. At the bottom of this grove ran a purling brook, or burn, hence the name Burn grove or Greave. Scores of times, on a summers evening, have I enjoyed a ramble along the banks of this beautiful stream, chattering as it flowed by the margin of the wood, amid the roots of tall elms and beeches, that reared their lofty stems upwards to the sky.

Burngreave Road was then a comparatively new road, and was made chiefly to afford an easier gradient to the town for the numerous coaches and vehicles that plied so constantly on the Barnsley and Leeds turnpike, before the opening of the railway; thus avoiding the terribly steep incline of Pyebank, down and up which they had to hitherto run.

It was a grand sight in those days, for us boys to watch the rival coaches and the Royal Mails, tearing along the road at eight or ten miles an hour, and the jolly, purple-nosed old coachmen on the box, with his four-in-hand, and the guard behind, in red coat, blowing his long tin trumpet, a yard long, as they dashed up Waingate and bowled merrily into the archway of the old Tontine Hotel, which then stood on the site of the present Market Hall, until the panting horses were pulled up in the large court-yard outside”.

Dean.