Does anyone know the history of the Bole Hills?

[Mags]

Western Road senior school used the Bolehills. We used to walk up there to play hockey.

I vaguely remember one of the teachers saying we were very lucky to be able to use them because of someones generosity.

Other schools used the facilities on other days.

[nomme]

Quick search turned up this:

http://www.broomhillonline.org.uk/archive/BANG_09.htm

in which it says

"Joseph Andrews, Bole Hill Quarry owner and builder, by Rod Andrews"

 

So Rod Andrews gave a talk about the quarry owner a couple of years back.

Perhaps you can get in touch with BANG and from there get in contact with Rod Andrews.

 

Nomme

[Mandem]

Madem

 

This is a cause worth fighting. I tend to agree that the Bole Hills are a recreational space. Where was the plaque you refer to? Was it on the path to the right of the bowling greens?

I am sure I have seen photos of Whit Sings being held there.

 

The plaque was on Northfield Avenue, the little road that goes on to the Bole Hills where the old St. Lukes church used to be. As you went on the road on the right hand side, just past the back of the police houses, there is a big opening on to the playing fields, it used to be on a post there.

[Mandem]

In J. H. Stainton's "The Making of Sheffield I865-1914" there is a mention that the council authorised the purchase of the Bole Hills in Sepember 1899, but nothing is revealed about the reason for the purcahase.

 

This is another brick wall I have been hitting. I have been trying to find out, as the Bole Hills was left as a gift to the people of Sheffield, from whom and how did the Council manage to purchase the Bole Hills

[Grahame]

CHAPEL ON THE BOLE HILLS

At the end of Stothard Road overlooking the Bole Hills was a tin chapel that was built in 1904AD as a mission church of St. Thomas. It was given the name of St. Timothy but on such an exposed site the corrugated iron building began to spring leaks and as the population of Crookes was increasing it became clear there was a need for a separate parish of St. Timothy. With that in mind the congregation looked around for a better location and in 1909AD the present a plot of land along with a house which is the vicarage was purchased in Slinn Street for £1500. The following year the corrugated iron building was removed from the Bole Hills to the new sit at a cost of £220. It has since been rebuilt and is now a fine stone building.

 

When the church moved to Slinn Street a stone pulpit was dedicated by the Bishop of Sheffield on the same site of the old chapel over-looking the Bole Hills. It was used for open-air services on fine summer Sunday evenings until it was pulled down in 1958AD. A modern house now stands on the site of the old tin chapel.

 

 

AIR CRASH ON THE BOLE HILLS.

About 1935 an aeroplane crash landed on the Bole Hills. Looking back and judging by today’s standards, it didn’t seem much larger than a bird. When word got around the children in Crookes spent their dinner hour rushing to the scene. The wreck rested in the corner of the playing field in which football was played during “Games” at school for pupils who attended Westways School. (Western Road School.) I remember playing football there myself and getting changed in the toilets that had no roof and the floor was always wet. At the time of the crash the Moorsyde housing estate had not been built.

 

 

ZEPPELIN AIR RAID

During the First World War Zeppelins flew over the East End of Sheffield and as soon as the sirens went people flocked to the Bole Hills and Clough Fields taking blankets etc. with them. In Brighton Terrace Road the tramping of feet could be heard as so many people turned out. Unfortunately, in the darkness people couldn’t see where they were putting their blankets and when daylight came some people found they had been lying on large, wet, slimy cow pats.

 

 

BOLE HILLS WEATHER

The Bole Hills are at the end of Rivelin Valley which funnels the wind making it stronger than it otherwise would be. This was used as a selling point for the new houses that were being built and Mr. Claude Barker who was a solicitor said about the cottages on nearby Toftwood Road: ‘There is no shortage of air here. The property is open to the four winds of heaven and when you see it I think you will be inclined to covet a house somewhere in the neighborhood.” One resident commented that the property was only open to the “four winds of heaven” in summer; in winter it was the ‘Four winds of Hell”!

 

The name “Bole Hill” derives from the practice of smelting iron ore. Bole Hills were always in exposed places because wind was needed to fan the furnaces.

 

There are tennis courts, a children’s playground with swings etc. a cycle track for BMX bicycles and appropriately Crown Green Bowling, on the Bole Hills

[Greybeard]

This is another brick wall I have been hitting. I have been trying to find out, as the Bole Hills was left as a gift to the people of Sheffield, from whom and how did the Council manage to purchase the Bole Hills

 

Try Local Studies at Central Library. The original council minutes may be available, or newspaper cuttings of the period and there are a couple of local histories of Walkley on the shelves.

[Mandem]

Try Local Studies at Central Library. The original council minutes may be available, or newspaper cuttings of the period and there are a couple of local histories of Walkley on the shelves.

 

Thanks for that, I will try there, I know there is a Sheffield Archives somewhere, does any one know where it is, and is it open to the general public?

[Grahame]

CROOKES

In AD 866 there was a large invasion by the Danes leading to the founding of settlements mostly on hill tops. These are easy to distinguish usually ending in ‘thorpe signifying a small farmstead. Therefore we get Osgathorpe, Jordenthorpe, Skinnerthorpe, Grirnesthorpe. Hackenthorpe, and Upperthorpe. Crookes and High Storrs would also be Danish settlements. The name Crookes derives from the Old Norse ‘Krkor”. meaning a nook or corner of land. There is early mention of Crookes from John de Crokes to Roger Myle regarding an inheritance in 1447.

 

In the nineteenth century Crookes was regarded as one of the holiday spots of Sheffield as it was said to be healthy and invigorating! Thomas Asline Ward, writing to a friend in 1855, said I find that your son has taken a partner and gone to Crookes for the country air. I am sorry his wife requires it and I hope her health will soon be restored.

 

 

RACKER WAY

Racker way is an old bridle-road which probably dates back to the Middle Ages. It passes “The Old Cottage” pub, on Walkley Bank Road, which is said to be one of the oldest licensed houses in Sheffield, then along Bole Hill Rd. Rivelin St. Rivelin Rd. passing the ‘Catholic Cemetery” then the “Holly Bush” pub, Hollins Rd, Oldfield Rd and Nethergate. (Stannington Road) Mules (and sheep) love the tender new Holly leave, so they would be left in the Holly Fields adjacent to the Holly Bush Inn while the rackers went inside to have a tipple of what they liked best.

 

An old photograph taken from Walkley shows the route of the Racker Way as it winds its way down Walkley Bank, passing the Holly Bush and rises over the hillside beyond to Stannington. The photograph was taken long before the housing estate was built at Stannington and the hillside is completely devoid of trees or houses. Prior to that it was covered with Holly bushes and landowners paid "Holly Rent" This was until Mr. Copley came along and grubbed them all up.

 

Other old roads in Crookes are Mulehouse Lane (now Road) there were stables for the mules on the corner where the dentist is. Mulehous Lane it is said existed from time out of mind. Heavy Gate Road. Steel Bank. Barber Nook. Broad Lane (part of Long Causway), Town Head. Upperthorpe and the houses in Commonside were said to be the oldest in Sheffield.

 

TO RACK

Is defined as a horse which moves with a racking gait. This is between a trot and a gallop, in which the forefeet move as in a slow gallop, while the hind feet move as in a trot. So the horse ambles or racks. However the English pack horse probably traveled at a very sober walk, carrying milk. butter, eggs, and farm produce from Stannington while bringing back other stores for the Stannington people from Sheffield. Apparently every householder in Stannington kept a mule (Stanningion itself would be small, comprising mainly of the area around Nethergate) and they also transported cutlery ground at the “wheels” on the rivers Rivelin and Loxley making the journey from Stannington to Sheffield daily. At other times the mules went into Derbyshire for lime and perhaps into Cheshire for salt.

 

DESIGNER JEWELLERY

It seems probable that these pack-mules not only made daily journeys into Sheffield, but were highly popular with the townspeople there; for we find they reproduced mule-shoes in silver and wore them with a silver chain as a necklace. One of these silver mule-shoes with its chain formed part of the treasure-trove that was found in Sheffield in October 1913, during excavations at the corner of High Street and York Street and is now in the British Museum. It is believed to date back before Charles II; but it was probably treasured as a family relic and hidden for safety during the Civil War. Its existence under such conditions goes far in support of our conclusions as to the antiquity and the popularity of the mules of “Ye Racker Way”.

 

 

COCKED HAT COTTAGES

Mr Unwin and his family have lived in Cocked Hat Cottages since they were built in approximately 1860. They stand near the junction of Bole Hill Lane and Tinker Lane which years ago used to be called Cocked Hat Lane hence the name of the cottages, although the shape of the land is roughly triangular like the cocked hat that sailors wore.

 

The gable end facing onto what is now Tinker Lane had a hay loft up above, you can see where it has been bricked up, at the top and there was a stable underneath. The doors have been filled in with matching stone and the stable and hay loft has been converted into a cottage. Mr Unwin believes the small windows at the rear of the property were due to the window tax and there are no windows at all in his lounge. The Unwin family owned a quarry on the Bole hills and Mr Unwins mother used to keep the Punch Bowl’ on Crookes. Dam Flask can be seen quite clearly from the cottages and Bole Hill Lane or ‘Cocked Hat Lane” was an un-surfaced country lane. Hay was grown for the horses to the rear of the cottages on what we would call the Bole Hills and you can still see the change in the vegetation, with the “grass” being much longer and more like stalks.

 

BURIAL URN

In the spring of 1887AD not far away from Cocked Hat Cottages at the highest part of the hill was found a baked cinerary urn containing human bones, a small cup and a damaged bronze knife. They were not covered by a mound, and they lay from six to eight inches below the natural surface of the ground. The record says, “The remains lay within two feet of an old lane called Tinker Lane or Cocked hat Lane leading at right angles from the top of the village Street at Crookes and pointing towards the Rivelin valley.”

 

The position of this burial site at the side of the road is worthy of note. In Sweden and Denmark, according to Vigfusson. monumental stones called “bautasteinar” (road-side monuments) These used to be placed along the high road, like sepulchral monuments of old Rome. Amongst the Romans, says Becker in his “Gallus”, “whoever could afford it selected a spot outside the city in the most frequented situation, as on the high-ways, and here a family sepulcher was erected.” Tinker Lane is an old highway and the urn is in Western Park Museum, it can be compared with many other urns of the same kind discovered in Derbyshire.

 

I hope I have answered your question to some small degree? Can I check if you saw my post about the Bole Hills on the previous page? The local studies room is in the Central Library on the first floor, on the right hand side as you go up the stairs. Thanks.

[BoroughGal]

Don't the council do this a lot, though? Such as Hillsborough Park - a gift to the people, however, the running track area appears now to have been sold to a football club - the "people" can no longer use it, unless they want to watch that particularfootball club play.... and the bottom end appears to keep being sold off in parts for the parking overspill on (Wednesday) match days - do they charge for this??

[Grahame]

I thought this thread was about the history of the Bole Hills?