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Hollinsend Recreation Ground


DaveH

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I also remember the stream at the top being quite deep, - deep enough to float down it in a tin bath.. neighbors had cine film of all of kids who lived around the 'green' on Ridgehill doing just that - and the slopes also seem much steeper especially when they had snow on them and you were go hell for leather down them on a sledge!

The stream at the top is quite deep and steep sided, but there are still times when it dries up.

Many houses up there do have gates into their back gardens, - a serious security issue in recent years.

There are also now several wooden bridges over the stream at the top end where it is deep and steep banked

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My family lived there from when the houses were built until the late 60's, but we remained on that road, moving further up to live in one of the shops at the top of Ridgehill Avenue . My great uncle who had lived there since the houses were built ( I think he was one of the builders) told me when I was a child, that the park had been built by out of work men in the 1930's.

Oh yes, the shops at the top of Ridgehill Avenue and onto Newlands Road.

None of these exist any more.

Have you seen this topic which may be of interest?

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Guest shullie

Hi, I was born on Ridgehill Avenue at number 115, and then in around 1968 we moved up to 138, which was the top shop, the Newsagents, where we lived until after my mum sadly passed away in 1976 - though we were there till around 1979. It was after that it became a house.

.

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Hi, I was born on Ridgehill Avenue at number 115, and then in around 1968 we moved up to 138, which was the top shop, the Newsagents, where we lived until after my mum sadly passed away in 1976 - though we were there till around 1979. It was after that it became a house.

.

I have sent you a PM

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Talking about Ridgehill Avenue does any one remember the old gentleman who repaired shoes in a workshop behind the garage about number 81. I have taken many a pair across the road for repair. He only had one leg, we thought lost in WW1. He had a granddaughter called Carol.

jiginc

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Talking about Ridgehill Avenue does any one remember the old gentleman who repaired shoes in a workshop behind the garage about number 81. I have taken many a pair across the road for repair. He only had one leg, we thought lost in WW1. He had a granddaughter called Carol.

jiginc

Can't place him jiginc, although we did have a bloke in the area about 20 years ago who used to go around the street with a treddle driven grindstone and he would resharpen anything with a cutting edge for you from kitchenware cutlery like carving knives and meat cleavers, to garden tools like shears, sythes, sickles and even the rotary cutters on lawnmowers. If anyone can remember him.

If this guy repaired shoes in a workshop I assume he was a traditional "cobbler" who would renail a sole or fit a new heel. With modern shoes glue seems to have taken the place of nails, and in our modern affluent society shoes tend to be thrown out and replaced rather than repaired in a good old fashioned "make do and mend" austerity way.

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Hi, I was born on Ridgehill Avenue at number 115, and then in around 1968 we moved up to 138, which was the top shop, the Newsagents, where we lived until after my mum sadly passed away in 1976 - though we were there till around 1979. It was after that it became a house.

.

If number 115 is the house I think it is, right in the corner of the green (marked in the Google Earth picture) then it would appear that the source of the Hollinsend Park stream would have been practically in your back garden.

The actual stream disappears into a culvert just behind the back garden of this semi detached block.

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If number 115 is the house I think it is, right in the corner of the green (marked in the Google Earth picture) then it would appear that the source of the Hollinsend Park stream would have been practically in your back garden.

The actual stream disappears into a culvert just behind the back garden of this semi detached block.

See post #19 in this topic on page 1.

It contains this photograph

The house with the large extension being built is 113, the house joined to it on its left is 115

The row of heavy plant growth marks the path of the stream.

Notice it ends just where the back garden of 115 starts.

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Guest shullie

If number 115 is the house I think it is, right in the corner of the green (marked in the Google Earth picture) then it would appear that the source of the Hollinsend Park stream would have been practically in your back garden.

The actual stream disappears into a culvert just behind the back garden of this semi detached block.

I think it may have done.

The last time I went up there to have a look, i noticed that 113 had taken some of 115's garden. When I was a child our garden[115] went across the top of 113 and we owned the rights to access as well as the gate to the park. My great uncle who had lived there since the house was built, had kept chickens and so there were a number of chicken runs, as well as a number of fruit trees.. apples and plums. We thought we had an a orchard as kids.

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I think it may have done.

The last time I went up there to have a look, i noticed that 113 had taken some of 115's garden. When I was a child our garden[115] went across the top of 113 and we owned the rights to access as well as the gate to the park. My great uncle who had lived there since the house was built, had kept chickens and so there were a number of chicken runs, as well as a number of fruit trees.. apples and plums. We thought we had an a orchard as kids.

113 has been very much extended in recent years so the rear gardens themselves may have altered as you suggest.

When we first moved into this area in the mid 1980's the corner house (either 113 or 115) was occupied by a young family and the man of the house was a fireman who worked at the fire station on Mansfield Road.

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Guest shullie

we had left the area by the 1980's I'm afraid, though nearly moved back - we went to buy a house, across from the Green, but was gazumped *laughs* - That must be over 7 years ago.

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we had left the area by the 1980's I'm afraid, though nearly moved back - we went to buy a house, across from the Green, but was gazumped *laughs* - That must be over 7 years ago.

Houses on this estate come on to the market fairly frequently as they are 1930's semi detached houses and so sell for a "reasonable" price, are fairly well built and most have 3 bedrooms so make excellent first homes for young families.

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Guest Glyn -DJ

This is a post that has brought back so many happy memories, In the school holidays i spent most of my time with my grandparents who lived at the side of the now disapeared Rex Cinema, as both my parents both worked.

Both my grandparents were members of Hollins End bowls club and my brother and me spent many happy hours on the putting course or playing bowls up there, on the raised second green.

Woe be tide any children that tried to get on the one in front of the pavillion.

I can also remember my Nan taking us accross Ridgeway Rd to get an icecream from one of the shops (can't remember which one) they had so many different flavours, in tubs, i could never make my mind up.

On a slightly different tack, i'm sure that you had to walk up the steps to the war memorial at the junction of Ridgeway Rd / Hollins End Rd?

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This is a post that has brought back so many happy memories, In the school holidays i spent most of my time with my grandparents who lived at the side of the now disapeared Rex Cinema, as both my parents both worked.

Both my grandparents were members of Hollins End bowls club and my brother and me spent many happy hours on the putting course or playing bowls up there, on the raised second green.

Woe be tide any children that tried to get on the one in front of the pavillion.

I can also remember my Nan taking us accross Ridgeway Rd to get an icecream from one of the shops (can't remember which one) they had so many different flavours, in tubs, i could never make my mind up.

On a slightly different tack, i'm sure that you had to walk up the steps to the war memorial at the junction of Ridgeway Rd / Hollins End Rd?

Welcome to Sheffield History Glyn-DJ and thank you for posting. Glad you are enjoying this topic.

As Ridgeway Road has been widened and the area in front of the park has been cut back it is very likely that the war memorial is in a slightly different position now to what it originally was, - and you do have to walk down the steps to it now.

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Guest Glyn -DJ

Thanks for the welcome, I found some photo's online this afternoon of how the memorial used to look,

its in the same position, they've just built up the pavement around it when they modified the junction.

I also noticed a name on the memorial, "J Hardwick" It could be an ancestor as my Great grandma was a Hardwick that lived in the cottages on Hollinsend Rd / Firth Close.

Does anybody on here know the name of the pub that was opposite the Hollin Bush? It's been bugging me for ages.

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Would it be the Yew Tree? It was on the other side of Hollinsend Road to the Hollin Bush.

Yes that sounds familiar.

Wasn't the Yew Tree a very old pub which had been a stagecoach stopping point to change horses and there were several stories about highwaymen associated with it?

I can't remember the stories but they are in Pauline Shearstons book on the history of Gleadless, - the full version of her book which I don't have so can't look it up to check.

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As a result of a terrible memory my copies of Pauline Shearstone's books are currently in Gleadless and I am in Carlisle so I can't check it either :blink:.

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Guest Glyn -DJ

Thanks for that, the name seems to ring a bell, as do the books about Gleadless by Pauline Shearstone, I seem to remember my Nan having them, becuase i think she's in a school photograph aged about 8 yrs old in one of the books.

I shall have to ask if my mum inherited them.

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I shall have to ask if my mum inherited them.

If she does see if I am right about an incident there involving highwaymen.

I am very curious about this now as it came to me from nowhwere when I read madannies post.

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If she does see if I am right about an incident there involving highwaymen.

I am very curious about this now as it came to me from nowhwere when I read madannies post.

Already sorted it using the thin illustrated version of Pauline Shearstones work (£9.99, only available from Gleadless Townend post office apparently)

We are right about the pub on Hollinsend Road, - it was the Yew Tree, demolished in 1964 or shortly after (Paulines photo indicates 1964, shortly before it was demolished)

However, I was wrong about the highwaymen stories.

The pub concerned here is The Ball, Gleadless on Gleadless Road which was known as "the oldest pub in Gleadless" dating back to the 1700's

This pub does involve some tales about a highwayman called "Swift Nick" but the stories are ommitted from the smaller Shearstone book and may be in the full version (A history of Gleadless) which I have no access to.

If anyone has access, and the stories are local, perhaps a topic on "Swift Nick, local highwayman" would be good.

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From the Sheffield Independent , 17th 1899:

A Highwayman's Ride to York.

Macaulay once declared that "the ride to York” had been fathered on every highwayman in turn : anyway, the tradition was in existence a generation before Turpin’s day. The original "Black Bess" seems to have been a “blood bay," and the rider that famous North-country robber John Nevison, who, in recognition of the achievement, is declared to have received, from no less exalted a person than King Charles,a free pardon and the appellation of "Swift Nick." Nevison, in his own day, was a much more redoubtable rascal than ever Turpin in his. He is declared to have indulged, even more freely than his fellows, in that peculiar highway virtue of charity at the expense of the rich; and we are assured that his manner with ladies was most persuasive. His operations seem to have been carried on on a grand scale, and he is said to have levied toll on the Yorkshire drovers in return for protection against his own cloth. At all events, there is no evidence of his ever having stooped to such pettifogging thefts as the silver sucking-bottle which Du Val took from the baby on Blackheath, or the serving-wench's purse which caused a quarrel between Turpin and King. Two feats are specially recorded of him - the leap over the sunken road in the rock at Ferrybridge and the ride to York. The story of the latter is told by Dafoe, in his "Tour through the whole of Great Britain" and his version is probably as true as another. At four o‘clock one morning Nevison robbed a gentleman on the slope of Gad's Hill, and then, suddenly seized with the idea of establishing an alibi by a desperate ride, clattered away down the hill to Gravesend. Hs lost a full hour in securing a passage over the river, but once across he rode up the stream to Tilbury, and then swinging inland, dashed away north to Chelmsford. In that town he baited his horse for half an hour and gave him some balls; then he swung himself once more into the saddle, and settled down to his long gallop over the flat country to Cambridge. Hs passed through the University city without drawing rein, and, keeping to the lanes, came at last by Fenny Stanton and Godmanchester into Huntingdon. There he rested for another half-hour, baiting his horse and himseIf, indulging in a nap and then once more into the saddle and away, sailing between the hedges and cantering over the moors, until late in the summer evening he saw the mighty cathedral towering above the walls of York. Seven o'clock had struck as he rode in through the gate, but his first thought was for his horse. Having seen him groomed and changed his own dusty riding apparel, he sauntered down to the Bowling Green. He laid a wager with the Mayor and asked his Worship the time of day ; it was a quarter before eight. Of course he was arrested for the robbery; of course he called the Mayor as a witness; and of course he was acquitted. The ride is probably quite as apocyphal as that of Turpin, but it has at least the right of priority. Ainsworth took it and weaved it into “Rookwood," and so gave new life to the legend. In L’Envoy to the novel, forestalling the criticisms which he saw were inevitable, he declared he made his highwayman such as, from tradition and history, he believed him to have been, which only proved he was particularly ignorant of his subject. Mr.Richard Turpin of history, ex-butcher, sometime poacher, housebreaker, sheep-stealer, and horse-thief, who seated an ancient crone on her own fire and robbed serving-wenches of their purses, is a very different person to the romantic Mr. Turpin of “Rookwood."

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On 14/06/2009 at 3:28 PM, DaveH said:

Outside of the tennis courts are these foundations.

There used to be toilets at bottom of park as you came in from h

linsend road,however these were in a bad state when i can remember them in late 50s early 60s.

DSC03849.JPG DSC03850.JPG

 

They are all that remains of the changing rooms used by football teams using the park for games of football at weekends.

 

The changing room was destroyed by fire, - deliberate arson, some years ago.

 

Strangely for a park of this size and range of facilities there are no public toilets and never have been.

There are toilets in the pavilion as at one time it also had a small cafe, but today these are hardly public.

 

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Is this part of the park between Ridgeway Road and Gleadless School? Or am I in the wrong place?

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On 2009-6-14 at 16:30, DaveH said:

These steps at one end of the playground have been there for years and seem to serve no purpose, except for being a falling hazard.

 

The small area at the top of the steps seemed to be used years ago mainly by young girls to play skipping and hopscotch.

 

post-822-1244993413_thumb.jpg

There was a shelter the size of the concrete area which was open at the front and had wooden bench seats inside it.

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