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The Highways and Byways
of
Old Sheffield

A LECTURE

Delivered before The Sheffield Literary and Philosophical Society,
February 9, 1906

by
R. E. LEADER
(revised, and published by request)

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Part Two

[ Part 1 ]

Ringinglowe to Chapel-en-le-Frith

A tedious pull up to Burbage Bridge, over a loose and stony surface, awaited the fresh team. For the travellers, at least, the neck-imperilling descent to Hathersage (not obviated until about 1820, when the present approach by "the Surprise" and Hathersage Booths had been substituted) was more trying; and one can well imagine that arrival at the predecessor of the Ordnance Arms would be grateful alike to hungry man and to panting beast.* Excepting for the run along the Hope Valley, the remainder of the journey was even more "uncouth". Beyond Castleton the stern Winnat's Pass had to be negotiated.**

[Footnotes –
* The Ordnance Arms, Hathersage, is mentioned in an advertisement (Sheffield Mercury), April 30th, 1814; again, June 16th, 1821:- "Hathersage New Inn, to be Let. The Wellington Coach passes and repasses through the town every day, and Hathersage is a sort of half-way stage from Sheffield to Chapel-en-le-Frith, being situated about ten miles from the former, and eleven from the latter".
** The present road, avoiding the Winnats, is spoken of as "new" in 1822, when Rhodes published Part III of Peak Scenery (p. 121).]

Equally exposed as the Burbage road to the snow drifts of winter and to the mists of autumn, the bitter blasts that at all seasons hurtle down this gorge had to be reckoned with, as the horses endured the killing strain of the cruel ascent. And when the summit had been at length reached, the hapless "outsider", chilled to the bone, must still face the drear inhospitality of the bleak uplands in what an old writer calls a "Windy and tempestuous countrie", before reaching, by a precipitous descent in the now disused road, Chapel-en-le-Frith.*

[* Footnote – The present approach to Chapel-en-le-Frith was apparently substituted in 1801.]

Ringinglowe to Grindleford and Buxton

That is one branch of the road authorised by the Act of 1758. The other, you will remember, was to start "from the Guide Post near Barber's Field Cupola to Grindleford Bridge and Buxton". Now Barber's Field is at Ringinglowe, and what is thus indicated is the Ankirk road, which, turning to the left at the toll-bar there, begins with an acclivity well calculated the quench the gaiety of a team fresh from the stables of the Norfolk Arms.* Thereafter many ups and downs lead to Stony Ridge.**

[Footnotes –
* "Cupola" and "Barber Fields" are marked, on some maps, in the angle made by the road and brook, south of the old toll-house. The Ordnance Map substitutes "copperas works" or "Cupola", and gives "Barber Fields Farm" a short distance below. Since this Lecture was delivered, a writer in one of the newspapers has stated that there is, or was, on the Ankirk road (where several old milestones remain) a field gate pillar, similar to others apparently placed to mark the track in winter, bearing the date 1745. If this date be contemporary, and not posthumous, it shows the road in existence earlier than the Act of 1758, and indicates that the "widening and repairing" authorised by the preamble, are to be taken literally as to this section at least.
** There remains a stretch of disused road, from Stony Ridge toll-house to the Wooden Pole above Froggatt Edge, whose connection is puzzling. It is not sufficiently in line with the debouchure of Ankirk Road to look like a continuation of this to Froggatt Edge or Owler Bar. It is part of the later turnpike from Stony Ridge to Froggatt, abandoned, possibly, because the attractions of Fox House made drivers prefer a longer route – down one side of a triangle and up another, instead of traversing its comparatively level base.]

The descent thence by Fox House and Padley Woods represents, in the main at least, a road existing before the turnpike days. For the Rev. Samuel Smith, to whose journey in 1707 I have previously referred, when returning from Norton to Chapel-en-le-Frith, arrived at the Wooden Pole above Froggatt Edge by the bridle-path from Totley Bents, and there "lighted of a faresh rode, and so to Greenfield (that is, Grindleford) Bridge".

Sir William Road

Here the inexorable despots of the turnpike period condemned the hapless traveller to turn up what we know as "Sir William". Drawn, as with a ruler, across Eyam Moor to deserted Bretton and on to Great Hucklow, this conspicuous feature in the landscape emphatically suggests the Roman hand. But whether as imitators or as pioneers, the roadmakers of 1758 audaciously accepted its amazing gradients. Any one who has ascended it on foot can imagine what it must have meant to a laden coach. Well might Mr. Ebenezer Rhodes, in his "Peak Scenery", remark on the bold but blundering despite of both hill and dale shown by the Derbyshire surveyors. They combined, he says, with an utter contempt for the accommodation offered by valleys, a determination to display their talent for surmounting difficulties, by clambering up and down every hill that nature has interposed between them and their point of destination.

It would appear that, before many years had elapsed, the strain put by "Sir William" on men and cattle proved intolerable. I do not know precisely when there was provided the longer, but more humane, route from Grindleford Bridge to Calver, and thence up Middleton Dale, but it was in use in 1778.*

[* Footnote – No doubt, as the customary route between Sheffield and Bakewell, by Calver and Hassop, much earlier. At Calver Sough this crosses the road from Chesterfield up Middleton Dale to Tideswell, which we have seen to have been in existence in 1743. Mr. Firth (Highways and Byways of Derbyshire, p. 315) describes a gate post, near the Hassop Road, bearing the date 1737, and graven, on its three sides, "Sheffield Road, Chesterfield Road, Ashbourne Road". Calver Sough would be an appropriate position for such a direction post, and, but for the fact that the subsequent description hardly agrees with the surroundings, one might be tempted to suggest that this was the "stone pillar set where four roads met", that Jane Eyre saw when she left the coach at "White-cross, not even a hamlet" (chapter xxviii). "Four arms spring from its summit; the nearest town to which these points is, according to the inscription, ten miles; the furthest above twenty". Now Chesterfield is ten miles from Calver Sough, and Ashbourne (via Hassop and Bakewell), twenty; Sheffield is twelve. Mr. Firth's attempt (Highways and Byways, p. 331) to place "Whitecross" near Fox House, though conforming better to the situation described,

To Tideswell by Middleton Dale

In that year a certain William Bray published a "Sketch of a Tour in Derbyshire and Yorkshire". In this he counsels travellers coming from Tideswell to journey by Middleton Dale, so as to avoid not only "one very long, steep hill", but such succession of hills that each summit attained only showed yet another in front.*

[* Footnote – The Middleton Dale route left a good deal to be desired. In 1820 Lord Denman joined the Sheffield coach to Buxton, at Stony Middleton. "The hills were so steep and frequent that we were three hours in performing a journey of twelve miles". Firth's Highways and Byways, 158-9. For a description of the two roads which preceded the present one from Tideswell to Buxton see the same writer, 164, 235-6. He gives a terrible account of the earliest – that which was made turnpike by the Act of 1758 by Hargate Wall, near Wormhill, entering Buxton through Fairfield.]

This accurately describes "Sir William" as approached from the Hucklow end. Bray's further account of his journey from Grindleford to Sheffield shows that he came up by Padley Woods to Stony Ridge, and then across by Ankirk road to Ringinglowe. The 1826 edition of "Paterson's Roads" gives this as still the route. The 1828 Directory also shows that, even after Glossop Road was opened, Manchester coaches were running by Hathersage and Ringinglowe. So the road by Dore Moor and Ecclesall was not then made.

The Chesterfield road

Scornful disregard for the line of least resistance was by no means confined to the surveyors in the Peak. It was so much the common characteristic of their kind that this feature dominates other turnpikes of the period. Without describing these in detail, it must suffice to point out one or two illustrations.

When, in 1756, powers were obtained for an outlet southward from Sheffield better than by Newfield Green, coaches were expected to climb Derbyshire Lane to Norton Lees, and, skirting Norton Park, to reach Dronfield through Cold Aston.* The time occupied indicates conclusively the state of this road. In 1764 "new machines" were advertised as running bi-weekly from Sheffield to Birmingham. The journey required two whole days. Starting from the "George", at 5 a.m., passengers breakfasted at Chesterfield, dined at Matlock Bath, and "lay" at Derby the first night.** Breakfasted at Burton, dined at Lichfield, and arrived at Birmingham the second night. The contemporary coaches to London, going by way of Chesterfield, and thence joining the Great North road between Worksop and Mansfield, occupied four days in transit. Subsequently they came to regard a long circuit by Rotherham to Worksop a less evil than the severity of the Chesterfield route. At a still later period a new road, direct to Worksop, by Handsworth, Aston, and Anston, saved them the detour by Rotherham.

[ Footnotes –
* In 1812 the death is recorded of Mr. Anthony Norton, aged 86, "the first person who drove a coach or chaise between Sheffield and Chesterfield". Derbyshire Lane was obviated after 1796.
** So late as 1838 "The Dart" coach, from Sheffield to Derby and Birmingham, went by way of Matlock Bath.]

To Barnsley and Wakefield

Northerly, the facilities provided were no better. When a turnpike was projected to Barnsley, Wakefield and Leeds (1758), travellers, after crossing Lady's Bridge, and turning sharp along the Nursery – or, as we called it, "The White Rails" until "White" became a misnomer for anything in Sheffield – must needs labour up Pye Bank, both abrupt enough to break the heart of any horse ascending, and narrow enough to be perilous to any coach coming down.*

[* Footnote – A bit of the old road, on a higher level than the present, may still be seen between the bottom of Shirecliffe Lane, near the Pitsmoor toll-house, and Firs Hill. We read of the Leeds coach being over-turned at Bridgehouses in 1816, when one of the passengers being killed, the driver was tried for manslaughter.]

Little wonder that in the case of this, as of the Chesterfield road, Parliamentary sanction had to be repeatedly obtained for amendment, and delay in completion. The substitution, in the latter, of the easier route by Woodseats, in lieu of Derbyshire Lane, did not take place until 1795; and the supersession of Pyebank by the present Burngreave or Pitsmoor road is scarcely beyond living memory. Indeed, it is possible that there are veterans among us who remember coaches toiling up Pye Bank, and who have seen the dismal spectacle of gangs of chained prisoners marched up it on the way to Wakefield, what time "Silly Luke", on leave from the old Rock Street Workhouse, amused the onlookers by his quaint sayings, or frightened the children by his antics.

Other turnpikes

In course of time better outlets for Sheffield's people and merchandise were provided in other directions and with more reasonable gradients – to Tickhill and Bawtry, on the N.E. (1760); to Worksop (1764); and the Gander Lane turnpike up Intake road (1779), on the S.E.; to Penistone and Huddersfield (1777).* Later came the Abbeydale Road to Totley and Owler Bar;** the road to Langsett and Manchester on the N.W.; and the Ecclesall Road to Dore Moor, superseding the Sharrow Lane and Ringinglowe route.

[Footnotes –
* The old road to Owlerton, on leaving Shales Moor, swerved to the right, along the line now represented by Cornish Street, thence following the bend of the river to Morton Wheels, where Rutland Works stand. The predecessor of the present Infirmary Road was (1784) called Whitehouse Lane. From this Cherry Tree Lane (? Watery Street) diverged at right angles to Causey Lane, which led on the one hand from Netherthorpe to Upperthorpe (now Upperthorpe Road), and, on the other, by a "footway" (Meadow Street) to "Scotland". Watery Lane:– An old song concerning "a jovial cuttelar blade, who boneheft knives he made, down at 'Portmahon',", says:

"It's nother i' France nor Spain,
But it's dahn be Watery Lane,
Where t' little brig goes o'er
To Portmahon."

Like Porto Bello (taken in 1739) and Gibraltar (captured in 1704 and held against fierce attacks in 1720, 1727), Portmahon reflects Sheffield's patriotic enthusiasm. Porto Bello and Gibraltar were in use at (probably before) the middle of the 18th century. Portmahon appears somewhat later. Tragically associated with the name of Admiral Byng (1756), it possibly represents jubilation over the restoration of Minorca to England in 1763.
** In 1812 (Burgery Records, p. 425), the Town Trustees subscribed £200 "towards the proposed Turnpike road to Baslow by Abbeydale". In 1821 there was advertised the letting of tolls on the Owler Bar turnpike from Sheffield to Totley, and Baslow, and from Greenhill Moor near Norton by Holmesfield, &c., to Carver. Bars mentioned: Broadfield, Owler Bar, and Cupola Bar; Cowley Bar and side gate, Bradway Gate, and Froggatt Bar.]

The Glossop Road, curtailing the distance to Manchester, was opened in 1821. The contemporary newspapers waxed enthusiastic over the wonders this achieved. They dwelt on the level gradients, the mileage lessened, and the time saved. A carrier had traversed the road in ten hours. A traveller by coach, breakfasting late in Sheffield, could reckon on dining early in Manchester. It was a triumph which did not bear the test of experience. Within ten years the promoters of a railway to Manchester based their case largely on the tediousness and costliness of transferring travellers and merchandise "over the mountains of Derbyshire". It was claimed that the railway would enable a business man to pass to and fro in a day, with six or eight hours in Manchester for attention to his affairs.*

End of the turnpike era

Thus, almost before the turnpike system had been fully completed, there appeared the shadow of its eclipse. Despite its faults and drawbacks it is entitled to our gratitude, for during the hundred years of its activity it redeemed English roads from a state of neglect and decay that threatened to paralyse inland circulation, and it left us a possession which, under new methods of locomotion, is being galvanised into fresh life. But at what a cost!

The romance of the road in the old coaching days is a favourite theme with many modern writers. Selecting the finest roads, and dwelling only on roseate conditions, Mr. Stanley Weyman, Mr. Harper and others captivate us by the fascinating exhilaration of sweeping merrily along behind spanking horses, and awakening sleepy villages with the music of the horn, and the vision of busy life.

A sober lecturer has to present another side of the shield. The hills I have described loom on us with an awesome meaning when we read of old hunters being purchased for coaching servitude for £4 10s., and of drivers supplementing their four-in-hand whips with murderous weapons of weighted whalebone for the special flogging of the wheelers. These implements were brought into play ere the journey had well begun, while in addition passengers or onlookers were requisitioned to belabour the poor beasts with sticks and kicks.*

[* Footnote – See "Extracts from and Old Journal", in Sheffield Telegraph, January 16th, 1903.]

Remembering these things, one is almost tempted to look with tolerance on motor monstrosities, and to sympathise with that stout old Quaker, John Woolman, who, because of the cruelties under which horses died and post-boys suffered, refused either to travel or to send his letters by mail. And although, compared with the attendant inhumanity, toll-bars were a lesser evil, they were nevertheless a standing grievance. There were nineteen on the thirty-three miles between Sheffield and Halifax; and those of us who remember the irritations of the bristling cordon of gates surrounding the town, are not disposed to judge too harshly those who, after the manner of the "Rebecca" rioters, greeted the inauguration of Glossop Road by wrecking the Broomhill toll-bar, and carrying off the gateposts.

Byways in Sheffield

Bad as our high roads were, I have so dallied on them as to curtail the time available for some description of the byways of the town. These lay in a very small area. A circle with a quarter of a mile radius, drawn from the Parish Church, would embrace the whole of the houses, with wide unoccupied spaces to spare. The population increased so slowly, and the changes were so small, that what is true of the earlier holds good also, in the main, of the later years of the 18th century. I am thus freed from the limitations of a very precise chronology, but the difficulties of unaided verbal explanation are so great that we will, if you please, invoke the help of lantern slides in a short peregrination of the town.
[Limelight illustrations from Gosling's Map (1736), Fairbanks' (1771), and other plans, were shown and explained.]

Dangers of the streets

We have seen enough to convince us that a citizen of the eighteenth century, pursuing his business, or, the day's work done, indulging in the trivial round of social amenities, had no great distance to go. But nevertheless the perils of the streets were not inconsiderable.

There was no regularity in the frontages of the houses. These were not arranged, they simply occurred; built anyhow, according to the whim of their owners, with a contempt for symmetry which, however picturesque, was decidedly inconvenient. Thus the streets ran in-and-out, now severely contracted and anon straggling promiscuously. They were ill-kept and worse paved. The gutters in the centre of the thoroughfares were usually constructed with sharply sloping sides, leaving, in the narrow lanes, but a scant margin of footpath, flagged, we are told, with old grindstones, or boulders of all sorts, and of any size except square.*

[* Footnote – Autobiography of Samuel Roberts, 13 et seq.]

The streets being both irregular and filthy, much circumspection was required on the part of the pedestrian to avoid precipitation into the gutter; and in wet weather attention was liable to be distracted from his foothold by deluges descending from overhanging spouts. Slatternly housewives had, too, an inconvenient habit of throwing such garbage as was not left festering on their thresholds into the central channels to be swept away when the waters of Barker's Pool were let loose.

Thus passers-by had a fair chance of being incommoded by these, or by horses or cattle or pigs suddenly emerging from entries. For even the central streets of the town – High Street, Fargate, Church Lane – were largely occupied by cutlers, with smithies in the yards and gardens behind. The better class had also stables and cowsheds, and humbler tenements swine-hulls contiguous to the middens and well calculated to infect the adjacent wells. After the abandonment of the old practice of employing a swineherd to conduct the pigs to pasture in the woods, these animals found in the unscavengered streets a happy hunting ground, zest being added to their lives by frequent skirmishes with a much-derided and impotent pinder, against whom they and their owners waged perpetual war.

The practice of feeding the pigs at troughs on the pavements did not increase the comfort of pedestrians, and, of course, at night, the oil lamps being few, dim, and distant, the streets were additionally perilous.

Manners and customs

When domestic apprenticeship was imperative, and even journeymen sometimes lived in their employers' houses, it was a customary duty for lad or man to sally forth with a lantern to light home his master, or his "dame" clattering in noisy pattens, on return from some festive gathering; and to safeguard them from hooligan rudeness or felon assault. For the decrepit watchmen, of the type subject to Dogberry and Verges, were worse than useless. When not advertising their presence by proclaiming the hour and the state of the weather, they slept in their boxes — peacefully, except when jocund spirits threw box and man into the nearest horse-pond. Nor were the amateur link-boys an unalloyed advantage. There is on record an occasion on which an employer, sufficiently elevated to be specially conscious of his dignity and importance, testily bade his attendant keep his place and walk behind — whereby the good man presently found himself floundering in the horse-dike.

The lanes on the outskirts enjoyed an ominous reputation as the haunt of footpads. Blacklamb's Lane, now Broomhall Street, was accounted especially unsafe, and it is said that two persons were retained to wait, like dry ferrymen, by the saw mill where now Ecclesall Road joins Sheffield Moor, to escort timid wayfarers along the footpath leading to Sharrow Head. When John Henfrey exchanged his residence beside his works at the top of Eyre Street (now Dr. Cooke's) for a house at remote Highfield, anxious friends inquired how he expected, in view of the dangers of Sheffield Moor, to get home after dark. The dry reply was that he should not get home after dark — he should take good care to traverse the Moor by daylight.

Remnants of the past

The investigator with an observant eye may still discover survivals of the old thoroughfares. Grindlegate, a bit of the primæval footpath across Paradise Square and by Silver Street Head, exists to show us how, long before Queen Street was thought of, stout old George Smith marched from Pea Croft at the head of his children and apprentices to the Parish Church; and how Dr. Thomas Short, a learned physician, reached the house which he apparently inhabited in the same locality. Or there is New Street, a continuation of Figtree Lane when clergymen lived there, affording, with the adjacent Scargill Croft and West Court, a much-used passage from the upper to the nether part of the town.

Or, a little further afield, in different directions, we get reminders of old country paths — Convent Walk, Daisy Walk, Button Lane, Watery Street, Coulson Crofts, Green Lane, Bowling Green Street, and the rest. They are not always savoury, but you can traverse them without enjoying the experiences of a philanthropic lady visitor who, in 1843, complained of the invectives of resident viragos, idling, arms akimbo, on their door steps; and of the showers of mud with which the swarming children greeted any well-dressed stranger.

Disappearance of old names

Occasionally names remain to remind us of conditions now obliterated; yet too often have our local authorities, ignoring the past, arbitrarily exchanged suggestive topographic nomenclature for names as meaningless as they are pretentious. Unfortunately this preference for the euphemisms of a shoddy gentility, in place of the robust native habit of calling a spade a spade, affected our ancestors too.

Just as they abandoned Truelove's Gutter, Pudding Lane, Petticoat Lane, Bull Stake, Wellgate, and many others, for commonplace conventionalisms, so we have sniffed at Coalpit Lane, Tom Cross Lane, Dam Road, and others, as too gross for our refined susceptibilities.

The same thing has happened in respect to houses and inns. In their fine new dresses, these have been deemed too smart for names often quaint and always distinctive. Happily, Jericho alone remains as an exemplar of a curious fancy for importing inappropriate Biblical names from the Old Testament. Nineveh, Egypt, and Assyria, once familiar here, are known no more.*

[* Footnote – They were in the neighbourhood of West Bar; "Egypt" was the region through which the lower part of North Church Street was afterwards made.]

I am by no means prepared to join in the cry, sometimes raised, that the old times were better than these. As to the town, the best corrective to such a view might be the visit I have suggested to various localities or to the district between Pool Square and Holly Street, formerly Blind Lane. Amid its dishevelment and ruin, this still presents the outline it assumed when, in 1701, Ellis's Croft, contiguous to Brelsforth's orchards, and extending from Balm Green to near the Town Head, began to be divided into building plots. And its aspect is not charming.

Moral and social improvement

Again, as to past social and moral conditions, I would commend to anyone hankering after a return to what has gone, a perusal of the pamphlet containing the evidence, given in 1813, by the clergy and other well-known citizens, before Mr. Jellinger Symons' inquiry into the Trades of Sheffield, and "the moral and physical condition of the young persons employed in them". That terrible record of ignorance, depravity, vice and want, is an effectual corrective to any yearning after "the good old days".

Yet it is impossible not to cherish much affection for their humours and quaint characteristics.

The early railways

We smile as we read pæans over the acceleration, then thought so wonderful, achieved by the early railways. It seems like a dream to remember seeing fourth-class passengers herded in open wagons, no better than cattle trucks with seats,* and how those who journeyed at higher fares were cautioned to be careful to have their luggage piled on the roof of their carriage.

[* Footnote – Not always, indeed, with seats. A Manchester and Leeds Railway advertisement of 1841 says "Every train will have 1st and 2nd class carriages, and most of them, for the convenience of the working classes, open wagons, without seats, at fares proportionately low.  The Company's servants are not allowed to porter for wagon passengers, who must be at the booking office ten minutes before the departure of the train". A North Midland notice of the same date shows that between Sheffield and London only one train a day, each way, was available for 3rd class passengers, and they could not book through. The time occupied, via Derby and Birmingham, was from 9½ to over 10 hours, the fares being 45s., 30s., and 18s. 6d.]

One little boy of my acquaintance, making his first railway journey when, the Woodhead tunnel being incomplete, it was necessary to be carted over its top from one train to another, imagined the rhythmic pulsing of the carriages to be caused by men running behind and propelling them by large wooden levers – so the pace can hardly have been giddy.

The pioneer omnibus

Some of us who have lived to see the last of the Sheffield omnibuses were alive at the starting of the first – that dawdling vehicle which jogged deliberately, under "Old Edward's" pilotage, from the toll-bar by Tree Root Walk* to the Wicker Station. Its apparition was heralded by a dazzled journalist as "placing within the reach of the inhabitants of Sheffield the advantage of locomotion similar to those enjoyed by the public of the Metropolis in a degree which we (the editorial we) did not expect at present to have witnessed". There was another thing "we" did not expect – the magnetic force which compelled that surprising omnibus to make long pauses at the doors of public-houses.

[* Footnote – Abolished December 1, 1852. It was called Broomspring Field bar.]

Street scenes and humours

One recalls with amusement the rough but ruddy milk boys in their smocks, racing home on the tails of their donkeys after delivering the well-churned contents of their barrels. Country cutlers also contributed local colour to the streets by bringing in their wares on the patient ass. Though it had become unusual for clergymen to make the round of their parishes on nags, on horseback manufacturers rode to their works, lawyers to their offices, editors to their desks, and doctors to their patients — the last a custom which, if the streets permitted it, which they do not, one might be inclined to recommend to any young medical man keen to establish a practice. For through his horse every doctor became well known, and was a source of unfailing interest, especially to the youthful population. I cannot so cordially counsel imitation of that surgeon of my school days, one Durant, who drove tandem with Jehu-like vigour, and whirled round corners with a velocity which not infrequently flung the small tiger, "Joe", in parabolic curve from his perch behind the gig — to the temporary silencing of his strident horn what time he raced after the vanishing vehicle.

Mr. Durant's meteoric progresses were all the more thrilling because of their contrast with the normal repose of streets pleasantly free from the noisy fussiness of buzzing tramcars. An easy-going placidity pervaded the place. Everybody knew everybody, and no one was too busy to stop for a gossip on the pavement, or to step into a shop to discuss local affairs with its proprietor. For there was then an individuality, a sense of responsible citizenship, about the shop-keepers, largely lost in these days of invasion by the branch establishments of alien companies, with no thought beyond the chink of coppers in the till.

Remembered worthies

Vicar Sale was one of the few men in a hurry — a virtue or a fault which cannot be attributed to his predecessor, Dr. Sutton, or the contemporary clergy and ministers — Mr. Knight, Mr. Best, Mr. Mercer, Dr. Waddy, Mr. Thomas Smith, Mr. Stannus. Mr. Earnshaw, though walking as if deep in the mysteries of the Differential Calculus, was always ready to descend from the clouds for an exchange of friendly pleasantries. With reverential awe, we watched Mr. Montgomery, muffled to the mouth, deliberately pacing to the Mount; or Mr. Samuel Bailey, driving in stately philosophic contemplation to the George Street Bank.

Memories of the Lit. and Phil.

And this mention of some of your predecessors, sir, in that presidential chair, reminds me of the Friday evening meetings of the select band which kept alight, albeit somewhat dimly, the lamp of learning in the gloomy cave inhabited by the Literary and Philosophical Society. So grave and reverend were they that to this day a painful sense of unpardonable youthfulness and of blushing intrusiveness accompanies memories of having occasionally ventured into that austere atmosphere in search of wisdom — usually found to be exceedingly dry. The cold discomfort of the larger lectures, highly improving but mostly dull, given under the auspices of your society in the old Music Hall (the chill depression of whose forbidding staircase fitly heralded a dismal and draughty interior, full of nakedly empty benches) can still be felt. But this accentuates rather than blurs recollection of the familiar faces of the faithful few who, attending punctually with unflagging zeal, were sure of a welcome from smiling John Holland, as genial as if he were finding luxurious places for an overflowing multitude.

The good old civic virtues

Trivialities these are, yet they help to suggest a picture affording some relief from the stress and strain of modern life. No, the old times were not better, in innumerable respects not nearly so good, as these. Yet would our complacent pride in many ameliorations, conveniences, and advancements be less hesitating could we be altogether sure that the onward march has not been accompanied by some weakening of reverence, some relaxation of the tenacity with which our forefathers, in their homely, sedate, and resolute fashion, paid homage to that which is good, observed the moralities of life, and practised the cardinal virtues of citizenship.

In recent studies of the History of the Cutlers' Company, one outstanding fact has profoundly impressed me. There have been 274 Master Cutlers. For the most part, in the older days at least, they were plain and unpretentious men, not notable for learning, or wealth, or culture; scarcely distinguishable, except during one year of office, from the bulk of those who pursued a monotonous calling in an obscure provincial town, strikingly destitute of the finer amenities. They may thus be taken as a fair type of the community at large.

What is their record? It would not be strictly true to say that no speck of tarnish is discernible throughout nearly three centuries. But it is true to say that, notwithstanding mistakes — and they made many; in spite of unwisdom — and they showed much; whether it was their lot to preside over the Company in peaceful times, or in troublesome times, in the days of its prosperity or in seasons of adversity — there is not one who can be accused of blotting the Company's escutcheon or his own, or of having discharged his important task other than as an honest, upright, public-spirited citizen. In that, it seems to me, we have a record of continuous integrity, of fidelity to a great trust, glorifying this smoky town with a radiance of which we, as Hallamshire men, and as Yorkshiremen, have reason to be devoutly proud. And it will be a happy thing for Sheffield if the greater responsibilities which attach to greater opportunities and greater advantages are discharged in the spirit of the plain but noble and God-fearing men who have left us the priceless legacy of so lofty an example and so unsullied a name.

[ Back to Part 1 ]

APPENDIX

The following schedule, though not claiming to be exhaustive, may be found useful:—

1739	12 Geo. II., 12. Act for repairing, &c., roads from Bakewell to Chesterfield, and from Chesterfield to Worksop, &c. Powers enlarged in 1758.
1739	Town Trustees and Cutlers' Company oppose a Chesterfield Turnpike Bill.
1741	Town Trustees and Cutlers' Company consult about Turnpike to Manchester.
1753	26 Geo. II., c. 30 A great part of the highways having become ruinous, and almost impassable, because of wagons and burdens laid upon them and the small breadth of felloes of wheels, &c., Trustees of roads are to meet and cause ruts, &c., to be levelled, and wheel tracks laid down, and roads widened where necessary. Width of wagon wheels, number of horses, &c., regulated, confiscation of horses one of the penalties for breaches. A general measure also passed in 1773, 13 Geo. III., c. 78.
1756	29 Geo. II., c. 82. Act for repairing, widening, &c., road from the White Stoop, Derby, through Duffield and Chesterfield to Sheffield; Town Trustees subscribe. Terms and powers enlarged in 1776, and 1795 when the Cutlers' Company contributed to the "new turnpike road to Chesterfield".
1758	31 Geo. II., c. 60. Act for roads from Little Sheffield (1) to Sparrow Pit Gate (2) to Buxton; Town Trustees and Cutlers' Company subscribe. Powers enlarged, 1779, and 1795.
1758	Geo. II., c. 63. Act for repairing, &c., the road from Leeds to Sheffield, Cutlers' Company having petitioned for turnpike from Sheffield to Barnsley, &c. Town Trustees (1760) subscribe to Wakefield turnpike; powers enlarged 1760, 1769, and so far as relates to road from Wakefield to Sheffield, 1778, 1796. 1813, Powers granted for diversions between Wakefield and Sheffield, and new tolls granted.
1759	32 Geo. II., c. 38. Act for repairing (among others) road from Cross Post on Wirksworth Moor to join road leading from Chesterfield to Chapel-en-le-Frith at or near Longston. Enlarged, 1780.
1759	32 Geo. II., c. 43. Act for repairing road from Chesterfield to Turnpike at Hernstone Lane Head (near Stony Middleton), and road branching from said road upon the East Moor through Baslow and Wardlow, to the joining of the said road at, or near, Wardlow Mires. Also road leading between the said road, and branches from Calver Bridge to Baslow Bridge. Also road from near Newhaven House to the turnpike road near Grindleford Bridge. Powers enlarged, 1779.
1760	33 Geo. II., c. 39. Act for repairing, &c., turnpike from near west end of Chesterfield to Matlock Bridge, &c. Enlarged 1781.
1761	Lady's Bridge widened.
1760	1 Geo. III., c. 55. Act for amending, &c., road from Bawtry to Sheffield, and from Sheffield to south side of Wortley where it joins the turnpike leading from Rotherham to Manchester. Cutlers' Company accounts, 1761: "Expenses at Tickhill about the turnpike".
1764	4 Geo. II., c. 52. Act for repairing, &c., road from Worksop through Gateford, Anston, Aston, Handsworth, and Darnall to North East end of Attercliffe, where it joins turnpike from Bawtry to Sheffield. Enlarged, 1786.
1764	Geo. II., c. 64. Act for amending, &c., road from Tinsley to Doncaster. Enlarged, 1785.
1764	4 Geo. II., c. 65. Act for amending, &c., road from South end of Rotherham to turnpike near Pleasley; and from North end of Rotherham to turnpike on East side of Tankersley Park. Enlarged, 1774.
1765	Geo. III., c. 80. Act for roads from Brimington and Chesterfield over the high moors to the several places therein mentioned. Enlarged, 1786.
1770	11 Geo. III., c. 77. Act, &c., Penistone Bridge to Grindleford Bridge; and the roads leading from Bamford Woodgate over Yorkshire Bridge to the Guide Post on Thornhill Moor, to, or near the 8th milestone on Hathersage Moor; and to the village of Derwent. Revised and continued, 1793.
1777	17 Geo. III. Act for road from Sheffield to Penistone and Halifax. Enlarged, 1793, 1796, 1797.
1779	19 Geo. III., c. 99. Act for repairing, &c., road from Gander Lane to Sheffield (Intake Road); and also branching out of said road at Mosborough Green to Clown. Enlarged, 1798. Cutlers' Company and Town Trustees subscribed.
1780	Town Trustees join in application to Sessions for removal of the toll-bar at Heeley.
1781	21 Geo. III., c. 83. Act, repairing, &c., road from the present turnpike on Greenhill Moor to Hathersage, through the several parishes of Norton, Dronfield, and Hathersage; also the road from Chesterfield to Hernstone Lane Head, near Stony Middleton, to Totley, through the parishes of Bakewell, Hope, Hathersage, and Dronfield.
1801	41 Geo. III., 96. Act to alter (among others) road from Hernstone Lane Head, and from Sparrow Pit Gate through Chapel-en-le-Frith to Buxton, and to make a new bridge at Barmoor Clough, near Chapel-en-le-Frith.
1813	Town Trustees subscribe to proposed turnpike road to Baslow by Abbeydale.
1818	Act passed for making road from Sheffield to Glossop, by Ashopton Road. Opened, 1821. Turnpike gate at Broomhill forcibly removed by the disaffected, against whom proceedings are taken.
1825	Town Trustees approve of a scheme for uniting the Sparrow Pit Gate (Chapel-en-le-Frith) and Totley turnpike roads into one Trust.
1838	Cutlers' Company petition in favour of Wadsley and Langsett turnpike road.
1871 (circ.)	Turnpike Trusts gradually abolished, the maintenance of roads being transferred to local Governing Bodies.

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