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Like Rome, Sheffield boasts seven rivers (and many more streams and tributaries), and it was the ability to harness their power that led to the development of the city as a centre of industry. The rivers radiate from the city centre like the fingers of a hand, and in the past dams for the wheels were strung along the rivers like jewels on a necklace. OK, I know most hands dont have seven fingers, but you get the point.
The River Porter (or Porter Brook) is one of Sheffield's important rivers, flowing from its underground source on the edge of what is today the Peak District National Park all the way to its confluence with the River Sheaf (the river which gives Sheffield its name) under Platform 1 of Sheffield Railway Station. Along its route of approximately five miles, at the height of water-power, it drove nearly 20 wheels, and as water-power declined in importance, but Steel City boomed, the Porter was lined with works and factories.
Around two thirds of the way along the Porters journey lies the suburb of Hunters Bar, which takes its name from the former toll-bar, which once blocked what is today a busy main road. Mr Hunters house still sits close by. Hunters Bar was once predominately a working-class area, and the size of many of the houses reflects this, but over the past thirty years it has been gentrified beyond all recognition.
My 2011 Bladeforums Easy-Open Jack on the banks of the River Porter
I spent most of my early life, until my early twenties, living at Hunters Bar. I went to the local school, hung around on its street corners, played football in its streets, worked and drank in its pubs, and as a child I roamed and played in the ample woods and parkland close by. Right at the centre of Hunters Bar is the entrance to Endcliffe Park, and when I visited my daughter and her family yesterday, the park was our destination for lunch and for a stroll.
Coming from the area, I always find visiting Hunters Bar depressing, the changes that have befell it do not sit well with me, but it is the best part of ten years since I last visited Endcliffe Park, and I did not think it could have changed too much. To a large extent I was wrong. When I was a boy, we never wanted for entertainment in the park, wed play cowboys or Robin Hood with our cap or spud-guns and home-made bows and arrows, for a whole summer, let alone a day, wed paddle in the river, hunt for conkers (horse-chestnuts), play football or splits (mumblety-peg), and indeed get up to mischief. Today everything is laid on, the solitary set of swings has grown to small-sized amusement park, so big it blocks the spot where generations of kids tested their mettle jumping the river. The ugly old block where we told stories and jokes and smoked, and where Chester the Parkie skived from work, has been demolished. The drinking fountain has gone, whereas a thriving cafe and seating area takes up half the park. Nobody plays tiggy (tag) on the steps of the Monolith, but a virtual gymnasium has been erected. The park was packed with kids, but I saw little play.
This wasnt always a park though, and it contained three dams and wheels, Endcliffe Wheel, Holme Wheel, and Nether Spurgear Wheel. As a kid, we were very aware of this industrial heritage, it was all around us, we learned about it, and were part of it. If children learn about it today, particularly in what is now very much a middle-class suburb, it must have as much relevance to their lives as William The Conqueror. Yet, without the Porter and its wheels, and the many others, Sheffield would never have thrived.
The Porter at Nether Spurgear Dam
When the park was created, the dam of Endcliffe Wheel was turned into a lido, but by the time of my boyhood it had already been filled in, leaving no reason for the weeping willow trees that had formerly lined its banks to remain. Now they are long gone, as is all trace of the dam.
With the schools on 'half-term' holiday, the park was packed with mothers and kids. The area is no more populous today than in the past, but I guess that in the past, mothers simply let their kids out of the door and told them to be back by dark, now they have to be accompanied. Also in the past, the working mothers of the area were unlikely to be employed as teachers or college lecturers and so would not have been able to be in the park irrespective of the school holidays. It was noisy also, the posh mothers made almost as much racket as their noisy kids. It was not the sort of noise I remembered from the school playground, there was a lot of whining, and brattish screaming, the pitch and tone of it all was entirely different.
We had lunch in the cafe, the food was OK, but pricey, and the place was full of screaming, bad-mannered, jostling, rude individuals - and their offspring. I would have liked to go across the Victorian stepping-stones to visit the monument to a crashed US Flying Fortress, but the stepping-stones were blocked by metal-fencing erected while a merry-go-round and bouncy-castle were set-up. During World War Two, with the plane in flames, the crew had bravely flown it over the city rather than bail out, before crashing onto the hill on the edge of the park, with the only fatalities themselves.
A little further on is the dam of Holme Wheel, which was turned into a small boating lake when the park was created. I can just remember the boats. Now it is simply a duck pond, but its original industrial purpose can be seen by the careful eye.
My daughter and grandaughter at Holme Wheel Dam
Yet further on is the even longer dam of what was the Nether Spurgear Wheel, which was turned over to waterfowl when the park was created.
After Endcliffe Park, the series of parks continue, stretching all along the Porter until open countryside and farmland is reached. We continued into Whitley Woods, passing the dam of the Ibbotson or Upper Spurgear Wheel, and on to Sheperds (or Sheperd) Wheel, which I posted about here: http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php/1013985-Visiting-Sheffield
Sheperd's Wheel viewed across the Porter
The wheel was closed to the public, but I shall return to photograph it, and indeed I plan to walk the entire route of the Porter and try and find more remains of the rivers industrial history.
With my granddaughter still asleep, as she had been for the entire day, we re-traced our steps and went into the city centre, where I was able to purchase several books on Sheffield and the cutlery industry. One, which I obtained at a discount as it is now out of print, was produced by a local history society, and it deals with some of the nobs and big-wigs of the area, including George Wostenholm. Almost all the big houses mentioned in this piece, and the similar one about John Rodgers, are still standing, and indeed I can remember sneaking into the grounds of Wostenholms old gaff as a boy in search of frogs and tadpoles, something I very much doubt the young Tarquins and Henriettas that inhabit the area today are allowed to do.
The River Porter (or Porter Brook) is one of Sheffield's important rivers, flowing from its underground source on the edge of what is today the Peak District National Park all the way to its confluence with the River Sheaf (the river which gives Sheffield its name) under Platform 1 of Sheffield Railway Station. Along its route of approximately five miles, at the height of water-power, it drove nearly 20 wheels, and as water-power declined in importance, but Steel City boomed, the Porter was lined with works and factories.
Around two thirds of the way along the Porters journey lies the suburb of Hunters Bar, which takes its name from the former toll-bar, which once blocked what is today a busy main road. Mr Hunters house still sits close by. Hunters Bar was once predominately a working-class area, and the size of many of the houses reflects this, but over the past thirty years it has been gentrified beyond all recognition.
My 2011 Bladeforums Easy-Open Jack on the banks of the River Porter
I spent most of my early life, until my early twenties, living at Hunters Bar. I went to the local school, hung around on its street corners, played football in its streets, worked and drank in its pubs, and as a child I roamed and played in the ample woods and parkland close by. Right at the centre of Hunters Bar is the entrance to Endcliffe Park, and when I visited my daughter and her family yesterday, the park was our destination for lunch and for a stroll.
Coming from the area, I always find visiting Hunters Bar depressing, the changes that have befell it do not sit well with me, but it is the best part of ten years since I last visited Endcliffe Park, and I did not think it could have changed too much. To a large extent I was wrong. When I was a boy, we never wanted for entertainment in the park, wed play cowboys or Robin Hood with our cap or spud-guns and home-made bows and arrows, for a whole summer, let alone a day, wed paddle in the river, hunt for conkers (horse-chestnuts), play football or splits (mumblety-peg), and indeed get up to mischief. Today everything is laid on, the solitary set of swings has grown to small-sized amusement park, so big it blocks the spot where generations of kids tested their mettle jumping the river. The ugly old block where we told stories and jokes and smoked, and where Chester the Parkie skived from work, has been demolished. The drinking fountain has gone, whereas a thriving cafe and seating area takes up half the park. Nobody plays tiggy (tag) on the steps of the Monolith, but a virtual gymnasium has been erected. The park was packed with kids, but I saw little play.
This wasnt always a park though, and it contained three dams and wheels, Endcliffe Wheel, Holme Wheel, and Nether Spurgear Wheel. As a kid, we were very aware of this industrial heritage, it was all around us, we learned about it, and were part of it. If children learn about it today, particularly in what is now very much a middle-class suburb, it must have as much relevance to their lives as William The Conqueror. Yet, without the Porter and its wheels, and the many others, Sheffield would never have thrived.
The Porter at Nether Spurgear Dam
When the park was created, the dam of Endcliffe Wheel was turned into a lido, but by the time of my boyhood it had already been filled in, leaving no reason for the weeping willow trees that had formerly lined its banks to remain. Now they are long gone, as is all trace of the dam.
With the schools on 'half-term' holiday, the park was packed with mothers and kids. The area is no more populous today than in the past, but I guess that in the past, mothers simply let their kids out of the door and told them to be back by dark, now they have to be accompanied. Also in the past, the working mothers of the area were unlikely to be employed as teachers or college lecturers and so would not have been able to be in the park irrespective of the school holidays. It was noisy also, the posh mothers made almost as much racket as their noisy kids. It was not the sort of noise I remembered from the school playground, there was a lot of whining, and brattish screaming, the pitch and tone of it all was entirely different.
We had lunch in the cafe, the food was OK, but pricey, and the place was full of screaming, bad-mannered, jostling, rude individuals - and their offspring. I would have liked to go across the Victorian stepping-stones to visit the monument to a crashed US Flying Fortress, but the stepping-stones were blocked by metal-fencing erected while a merry-go-round and bouncy-castle were set-up. During World War Two, with the plane in flames, the crew had bravely flown it over the city rather than bail out, before crashing onto the hill on the edge of the park, with the only fatalities themselves.
A little further on is the dam of Holme Wheel, which was turned into a small boating lake when the park was created. I can just remember the boats. Now it is simply a duck pond, but its original industrial purpose can be seen by the careful eye.
My daughter and grandaughter at Holme Wheel Dam
Yet further on is the even longer dam of what was the Nether Spurgear Wheel, which was turned over to waterfowl when the park was created.
After Endcliffe Park, the series of parks continue, stretching all along the Porter until open countryside and farmland is reached. We continued into Whitley Woods, passing the dam of the Ibbotson or Upper Spurgear Wheel, and on to Sheperds (or Sheperd) Wheel, which I posted about here: http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php/1013985-Visiting-Sheffield
Sheperd's Wheel viewed across the Porter
The wheel was closed to the public, but I shall return to photograph it, and indeed I plan to walk the entire route of the Porter and try and find more remains of the rivers industrial history.
With my granddaughter still asleep, as she had been for the entire day, we re-traced our steps and went into the city centre, where I was able to purchase several books on Sheffield and the cutlery industry. One, which I obtained at a discount as it is now out of print, was produced by a local history society, and it deals with some of the nobs and big-wigs of the area, including George Wostenholm. Almost all the big houses mentioned in this piece, and the similar one about John Rodgers, are still standing, and indeed I can remember sneaking into the grounds of Wostenholms old gaff as a boy in search of frogs and tadpoles, something I very much doubt the young Tarquins and Henriettas that inhabit the area today are allowed to do.
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I like the photographs of men at work, there are less and less factories of skill in Europe&America these days, unfortunately.
