The Dairy-Maids of Porter Brook (Part 3)

Jack Black

Jack Black

Seize the Lambsfoot! Seize the Day!
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Part 1: http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php/1229530-The-Dairy-Maids-of-Porter-Brook-(Part-1)

Part 2: http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php/1231404-The-Dairy-Maids-of-Porter-Brook-(Part-2)



The blades they are sent to the wheel to be ground,
So we find the grinding trade goes the world round;
The rich grind the poor, and the great grind the small,
Thus we grind one another till death grinds us all.

(from The Cutler’s Song, 18th century Sheffield ballad)​










After Meadow Terrace, the River Porter flows on, running under Hickmott Road, between small terraced houses, and behind the oldest surviving cottages in the area (built by the Wilson family – see below – in 1810), which have now sadly been tarted-up beyond all recognition. After the river leaves Endcliffe Park, it gets increasingly difficult to follow, and since it is not possible to walk alongside the Porter at this point, it is necessary to take a parallel course, past the famous ‘Two Steps’ fish ‘n’ chip shop, and along Sharrow Vale Road. Soon, the next dam on the River Porter comes into view, sadly this beautiful mill-pond is the last of the Porter dams still in existence.



It is likely that Sharrow Wheel was already in existence by 1581, being known then as the ‘Wheel at Sharrow Head’, and owned by the Duke of Norfolk, with Thomas Greenwood as tenant. Greenwood was followed by a succession of tenants, and in 1737, Thomas Wilson, a shearsmith and edge tool maker, rented the wheel. Thomas had been Sheffield’s Master Cutler in 1731.

After Thomas Wilson died in 1740, his youngest son Joseph, took over the wheel. Joseph had trained as a silversmith, and had connections to Thomas Boulsover. He was also a plater and saw-maker, and he put all these skills to good use at Sharrow. However, it is as a snuff-maker that Joseph is remembered, and the business he founded is still running today. Joseph sounds to have been a bit of a character, and he wasn’t very good with money by all accounts, being declared bankrupt in 1775, when he sold off all his interests apart from the snuff business. With help from relatives, Joseph managed to pay off his debts, and was released from bankruptcy in 1778.



Joseph was joined by two of his sons, Joseph Jnr and Thomas, and with their help, the snuff business prospered. In 1788 an agreement was drawn up giving full control of the business to Joseph Jnr and Thomas, along with their brother William, but family relations suffered, and Joseph later left his family and moved to London, where he set up house with a Mrs Deborah Andrews, a former employee. I dare say there are a lot of lines to be read between in that family scandal, and there was subsequent scandal when the old man, now married to the former Mrs Andrews, died, and a sum allegedly owed to him by his sons was not paid to his widow. The second Mrs Wilson lost the subsequent legal action.





In 1798, the former family home at nearby Highfield, (now a hotel and restaurant where I have dined), was sold to Joseph Ibberson, and the Wilsons moved to the mill (along with their other property, Westbrook House). In the following years the mill was extended, and by 1825 the dam and mill, now owned outright by the Wilsons, (along with a lot of other land in the area), had taken the form it exists in today. Over 250 years after it was founded, the business is still run by Joseph Wilson’s direct descendants, and Wilson’s snuff is popular the world over. The old water-wheel (with a diameter of nineteen feet and width of four feet eight inches) is still in working order and occasionally put into service.

While the view of Wilson’s Snuff Mill has changed hardly at all since I was a boy, there have been changes to the area. The Piggy Jack Field where we played football has been covered with flats for a long time now, and the wall built to enclose them makes the ancient thoroughfare of Frog Walk (which the local students call ‘Mugger’s Alley’) a dark and gloomy place. The nearby stone wall which had a deep groove worn into it by generations of children’s feet has been surmounted by an ugly peak, and Frog Walk itself is litter-strewn and graffiti splattered.













Down in the ravine below Frog Walk, the River Porter flows on, passing under the once-grand entranceway to the old General Cemetery. Thousands of Sheffielders were once buried here, and when the city council decided to dig up most of the graves in the 1980’s there was widespread controversy. Some of those against the scheme felt vindicated in their claims of divine opposition, when grass seed sewn by the council over the old plots began to sprout cabbages rather than grass!





Unfazed by the controversy, the River Porter continues to flow towards the centre of Sheffield. The footpath turns down Stalker Walk, named for the Stalker Wheel which once stood here (the weir for this wheel is still in existence just before the river flows under the entrance to the cemetery).

The Stalker Wheel can be traced back to at least 1606, when it was used for the grinding of knives and other edged tools, being leased from William Jessop of Broomhall by Thomas Philpott. The wheel remained in the ownership of Jessop’s heirs throughout the 18th century, still being used as a cutlery wheel.

By 1793, the wheel was tenanted by Joseph Ward, who employed fourteen men, working at ten trows.

In 1806, Joseph and William Wilson took over the lease. The water-wheel is described as thirteen feet in diameter and seven feet nine inches wide. The eleven trows were grinding edge tools and table knives, and were let out at £8 per annum. In 1818, Joseph bought the wheel, and by 1837-8, a new dam had been added.



During the mid 1800’s, the wheel was owned and occupied by Henry Wilson, and it remained owned by the Wilsons until the 1870’s, when the mill was no longer occupied. The Hardy Patent Pick Co used parts of the building between 1876 and 1884, but by the early 1890’s both the dam and water-wheel had gone.















I would walk this way as a young child with my mother, going to and from my great grandmother’s. Back then most of the route smelled like my father’s overalls, that unmistakeable aroma of industry, of old oil on hot machinery. The factories that lined the far-side of the Porter are gone now, demolished or effectively replaced. Across the way, you can still see Pomona Street School, as it used to be called, where my grandmother went as a child, before going to work with her mother at Chesterman’s Bow Works next door. The old Chesterman’s factory is now something to do with one of Sheffield’s universities.
 


At the end of Stalker Walk, the river runs beneath Pear Street. It is hard to believe that you are on the edge of the centre of one of England’s biggest cities. Not far from here, in 1692, William Jessop owned two wheels, Broomhall Mill which was a corn mill, and Broomhall Cutlers Wheel.

Between 1760 and the late 1850’s the Newbould family worked the cutlers wheel, an overshot wheel, six feet wide. After this it went out of use. The corn mill had gone by 1872.









While the water-wheels stopped turning, industry continued to develop in the area along the banks of the Porter. Most prominent was James Neill Tools (Eclipse), once the largest small tool manufacturer in the world outside the USA. My father worked here for many years, as did my uncle, and both my mother and grandmother at one time. Now the huge, sprawling works complex is completely gone, and the site occupied for the most part by student accommodation. The old Wards Brewery, which once stood nearby, is also long gone, all that remains is a lintel from the old entrance.



The river disappears beneath the brick and concrete of the buildings that now stand here, emerging briefly approximately where the tail-goit of the next Porter wheel might have stood.

The Norris Wheel , as it came to be called, was built by Matthew Norris, a grinder, in 1760. The water-wheel was of the undershot type, and measured nine feet in diameter by ten feet wide, the unusual proportions being necessary because of the low head of water.

In the 1770’s, William Fox, a relative of Mr Norris, took up the tenancy. Norris sold the freehold to Dr William Younge in 1802, but went bankrupt in 1809. Younge remained the owner until the mid 1830’s, but by 1840 John Jeeves Jnr owned the wheel. It was no longer in operation by 1845, and in 1853 the site was occupied by the Albion Works.

Retail premises completely cover what was probably the first grinding wheel on the River Porter. Originally known as Sheffield Moor Wheel, in 1542, Robert Greenwood of Dore (a village to the south west of Sheffield) left it to his sons.

In 1587, there was a dispute between the Earl of Shrewsbury and Nicholas Strelley concerning which of them had the rights to rentals at the site, and in 1604, a Widow Trippet is named as tenant. After a succession of tenants, in 1735, the Bennett family began their long association with the wheel.

The dam was enlarged in 1754, and Edward Bennett Jnr went on to make his fortune from his sugar bakery and other businesses. After his death in 1790, he left the wheel and his house to the widow of his brother James. Widow Bennett’s Wheel had fifteen trows and employed fifteen men in 1794.

Francis Bennett was followed by her son George, who bought the freehold to Bennett’s Wheel in 1803 from the Norfolk estate. In 1819, the wheel was sold at auction, and by 1824 the mill had been converted into a rolling mill worked by Hodson & Co, and succeeded by Thomas Ellin & Co in 1831. The Vulcan Works rolling mill was powered by steam rather than water, and the dam, now reduced in size, was apparently used only to provide water for the boiler house. It was still in existence up to around 1853 however.

The Porter Brook emerges to flow past the former site of the Sylvester Wheel, which can be traced back to the late 16th century, when it was originally known as the Hind Wheel. In 1697, Field Sylvester was the tenant, but he died in 1716. The site was a small one, comprising three trows and one ‘ease’ (a spare trow).

In 1718, Thomas Wilson became tenant, and the Wilsons remained as tenants until the end of the 18th century. During this time the dam was enlarged and a second dam was constructed (which may later have been used by the Globe Knife Works). By 1794 they were operating twenty trows and had twenty workers.

In 1811, Thomas Holy bought the Sylvester Wheel from the Norfolk estate, and sold it on to Thomas Ellin, cutler, in 1814. From 1827, the wheel was referred to as Ellin’s Wheel.

By 1830, a Boulton & Watt steam engine had been installed along with a larger iron water wheel, but by the 1850’s water-power was no longer being used. Both dams had been filled in by 1864.









The final wheel on the River Porter was the Cinder Hill Mill, of which only the weir still remains. In 1581, it had four trows shared by six tenants. The Ellis family ran it as a cutlery wheel from 1588 to 1753. The dam was then enlarged and the site converted to a corn-mill, the tenancy being taken over by a miller called Whitham.



In 1774, Joshua Wigfull became the miller and his family stayed at the mill for ninety years. During this time, the name of the site was changed to Pond Mill. By 1795, the mill had two water wheels and two stones, but at this time Mr Wigfull became bankrupt.

In 1805, Joshua Wigfull the younger took over the lease, and extended the mill. By 1830 a steam engine had been installed to supplement the power of the two water-wheels. Together they ran six pairs of French stones, one pair of grey stones, two flour machines with brushes, and one bean splitter. One of the water-wheels was eleven feet in diameter by six feet wide.

The Wigfulls left the Pond Mill in 1866, and moved to the steam-driven Sheaf Mill, after which the dam was filled in.















The little Porter flows on towards its end, no wider than it is some miles upstream. It flows down an ugly rubbish-filled gutter, towards Sheffield Midland Railway Station, where its waters flow into the River Sheaf under Platform One, an area which is subject to occasional flooding. The Sheaf flows on to meet the River Don close to the site of Sheffield Castle, but those rivers, like the other waterways of Sheffield have their own stories.

Inevitably, much of what I have been able to relate here is the story of ‘The Great and The Good’, the rich and the ‘worthy’, the Lords of the Manor, the mill-owners, and landlords, the masters rather than the men. For the most part, only their names and histories are recorded. We know relatively little about the ordinary grinders who worked the wheels along the Porter, who sweated and toiled, and froze, and were killed, who worked long hours for little pay. They fed themselves and their families, but usually lived in poverty, and died young. Where they still exist, the tools they crafted may carry other men’s names, but they were made by Sheffield cutlers, who once made great knives, famous the world over, along the banks of the little Porter Brook.

Jack




"Just behind the station, before you reach the traffic island, a river runs thru' a concrete channel.
I took you there once; I think it was after the Leadmill.
The water was dirty & smelt of industrialisation
Little mesters coughing their lungs up & globules the colour of tomato ketchup."

(From Wickerman by Sheffield band Pulp)




My Bladeforums 2011 knife by the Porter Brook​
 
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I stayed up late reading this. Thank you for taking the time Jack. I have enjoyed this series greatly. I think back to all the time I spent in the Ecclesall and Endcliffe areas when I was young, I never considered the significance of the watercourses.

A superb read :)
 
Thank you Paul, I'm up late myself :) When I was a child, my mother, and I guess a lot of other people, used to refer to the many small weirs on the Sheffield rivers as 'waterfalls', but of course every single one of those weirs, on the Porter and everywhere else, is a sign of industry of one form or another, even if only a corn-mill. Whenever I come across an old weir, I always look around to see what else I can find.
 
Thank you Mr. Black. Reminds me of some wonderful times spent in Portsmouth a long time ago.:thumbup:
 
I've enjoyed all 3 parts of some great history and will probably return to read them over again in the future.

Thank you taking time to take all the photos and put this together, very much appreciated.

Have really enjoyed reading and looking at these post Jack - THANKS!

And another question - can you tell us what these wheels were made of?
 
Thanks for the very kind words fellers, I'm glad that it was of interest :thumbup:



The water-wheels were primarily made of wood, mainly oak, with some pine used. A few had buckets made of leather. Even the inner workings of the hull would use a lot of wood, with leather 'bands' to drive the grindstones and some wooden pulley wheels. As time went on, there would have been more and more use of iron. In the form it survives in, the Shepherd's Wheel has spokes, centre-hub, and rims made of cast-iron. The bearings on which the wheel is mounted are of either brass or bronze (the latter seems to have been common).

You might find it useful to look at my thread about the Abbeydale Wheel ('Wheel' is the name for the works as well as for the water-wheel itself): http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php/1105366-A-Visit-To-Abbeydale-Industrial-Hamlet The photo above is from Abbeydale, where there has been some recent restoration work.

In writing this series, I've assumed a basic knowledge of the way water-wheels work, but if there are any questions, I'm very happy to try and answer them :) :thumbup:

Jack
 
Another very interesting installment, Jack. Your even risking life and limb along the Frog Walk to bring us these adventures. :thumbup::thumbup:

I have an idea of how the whole system works but an installment on the workings inserted somewhere would not be a bad idea.
 
Gevonovich said:
Another very interesting installment, Jack. Your even risking life and limb along the Frog Walk to bring us these adventures. :thumbup::thumbup:

I have an idea of how the whole system works but an installment on the workings inserted somewhere would not be a bad idea.
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My last trip to Sheffield involved Frog Walk in the wet and drizzle - those old stone steps and flagstones can be pretty deadly in the wet let alone the muggers! :eek: :D

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It could have been worse! :eek:

Paul_McCartney_-_We_All_Stand_Together.jpg


I'll try and find some diagrams online. Unfortunately, there are several different wheel designs, and just about every mill/wheel is different in some way! The thing most of them have in common is a weir, which slows the water down, and then this allows water to be run off through a channel (the head goit or mill race). On large rivers the water might go direct to the wheel, but on smaller ones, a dam is needed to allow the water to accumulate, and this also allows the flow to the wheel to be easily controlled. Then I guess we have to talk about different types of wheel, which vary in efficiency...I'll see what I can do! :D
 
Jack - it is for certain that you love history and I have enjoyed the story and pictures.

I like history too, however, nobody here on the forum matches your keen interest in the days of old. I mean that in a very positive way. :thumbup:;)

Just say NO to the FROG WALK !!! :eek::D
 
Thank you very much Primble, living so close to all this old cutlery history, I feel I have a duty to share it here :) :thumbup:
 
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This site has some good basic info on water-wheel design with diagrams: http://www.alternative-energy-tutorials.com/hydro-energy/waterwheel-design.html

In Sheffield, the ‘Pitchback’ design referred to is known as a ‘Backshot Wheel’.

If you want to read further, you could do worse than download this PDF here: http://hmf.enseeiht.fr/travaux/CD0708/beiere/3/html/bi/3/fichiers/Muller_histo.pdf

And inevitably, there’s a Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_wheel

Some time ago, I posted some pics of a huge breast-shot wheel at a mill near Leeds, England, which was still in use until the weir collapsed in 1983. It's now been restored, and fully operational. The last open day I went to there, there was a blacksmith there making knives, and harnessing the water-power :)





And finally I would just like to give a big Anglo-Saxon two-digit salute to the teachers at Hunter's Bar School who thought I wasn't paying attention during the environmental studies and history lessons! :grumpy: :p ;)
 
Thank you Jack!
That was a heck of an effort putting these three threads up for all to enjoy and it is much appreciated!

That Two Steps fish & chips shop looks just like a little fish & chips shop I visited in Southampton after a day of carousing around town with some ship mates.
 
So much history, even in a fish and chip shop!
I don't know what it is, but I haven't had better fish & chips than what I had in England.
 
Great stuff, Jack! I appreciate it and I will take a read a littler later tonight.

And knock off those Charles Bronson impersonations on the Frog Walk:D
 
mykel m said:
So much history, even in a fish and chip shop!
I don't know what it is, but I haven't had better fish & chips than what I had in England.
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LOL! Well, they have been cooking them a long time here :D

Gevonovich said:
Great stuff, Jack! I appreciate it and I will take a read a littler later tonight.

And knock off those Charles Bronson impersonations on the Frog Walk:D
Click to expand...

LOL! :D :thumbup:
 
Another thank you from me Jack. You have put a lot of work into that journey. Thank you again. I am much wiser now.
 
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