Denby Dale, West Yorkshire

Lived there

Denby Dale is where I use to live untill 1994.

Sheffield - A History & Celebration

The late 18th-century town was recorded on detailed maps in 1771 and 1797 by William Fairbank. By the latter date the town had changed in two main ways. Most of the open ground (mainly gardens) within the existing town had been built upon and the town had expanded southwards. This had been achieved by the enclosure of and the erection of workshops and houses on Little Sheffield Moor (the modern Moor) and by the urbanisation of the former Alsop Fields on the slopes above the Sheaf valley to the east and south of St Paul’s Church. The streets were laid out in a grid-iron plan under the direction of the lord of the manor, the 10th Duke of Norfolk, between 1771 and 1778. Sheffield continued to grow apace in the early 19th century. In 1801 its population had grown to nearly 46,000 and by the time of the 1831 census it had soared to more than 90,000. Although the population growth had been accompanied by substantial housing expansion, the town was still a very crowded place, with many of its poorest inhabitants living in back- to-back housing built around small yards or ‘courts’, a considerable proportion of them still obtaining their drinking water from wells. Even where piped water was available it was often obtained from a standpipe in the yard, where there was a constant danger of leakage from the shared privies and primitive drains into the drinking supply. The problems of over-crowding and a deficient public water supply led - although this was not understood at the time - to the deaths of 402 inhabitants of the town in 1832 from a virulent outbreak of cholera.

Sheffield - A History & Celebration

While the tide of council house building swept ever outwards, mainly to the north and east of the city centre, the ‘scarlet fever’ of private red-brick detached and semi-detached houses and bungalows filled the southern, south-western and western suburbs, Nether Edge, Endcliffe and Ecclesall to Beauchief, Dore, Totley, Ranmoor and Fulwood. (Sheffield City Council Planning Department) The view over the part of the city centre from the tower of the town hall in 1969 towards the Hyde Park flats (left background) and Park Hill flats (centre and right background).

Sheffield - A History & Celebration

Fortunes were made based on the American market by light steel trade firms such as W and S Butcher, James Dixon and Sons, William Greaves, Mappin Brothers, Marsh Brothers, Joseph Rodgers and Sons, and George Wostenholm and Son. Some firms even went as far as naming their new works after the American trade, for example, George Wostenholm’s Washington cutlery works, Brookes and Crookes’ Atlantic cutlery works and Alfred Beckett’s Brooklyn saw works.