Can this tiny lane off Penistone Road lay claim to be Sheffield’s most historic and colourful street?
Hillsborough is enjoying a renaissance at the moment, with thousands of fans seeing what the area had to offer at Tramlines this weekend. But just behind the main stage where Dizzee Rascal, The Streets and Royal Blood, among many others, put their names into the history books of this sometimes unsung district, an ever more colourful and bizarre heritage lies hidden in the trees. Loz Harvey goes in search of the stories of Club Mill Road, where the truth is often stranger than fiction.
There are places where history can hit you in the face. The Tower of London, the Killing Fields, Alcatraz; we’ve all stood in places where you can immediately sense what happened there — the weight of history omnipresent. Then there’s those places where the history is hidden, in silences and in nature, and behind steel fences and abandoned ambitions. Club Mill Road is one such place, where abandoned mills jostle with overgrown graves, left to the elements and the wildlife that has made a triumphant return.
Trace its stories over a mile-long path alongside the River Don and Club Mill Road has a history that begs to be uncovered. It is a story than involves graveyard riots, macabre sextons, notorious lion-lovers and circus entertainers. It involves a whole lot of tragedy too, but hope and ambition too. Could it even be the street that sums up Sheffield best?
We begin our journey at Wardsend Cemetery. It’s not an easy place to find. Standing on the opposite side of the River Don, past Sheffield College and Owlerton dog track, you have to pass crackling pylons and a breaker’s yard before going over the bridge that replaced one swept away in the floods of 2007. The inhabitants of Wardsend share their spot with a scrap metal merchants, and a steady trail of new age travellers — a fairly recent addition to this Victorian hinterland. But, if you stand on the site of the former chapel at Wardsend, a place that has in recent years welcomed bug hunts and bio-blitzes and staged concerts, talks and tours, is to feel a sense of overwhelming peace and calm. You can hear the clank and rattle of nearby Hillsborough and the sounds of wildlife, only occasionally disrupted by a goods train that whizzes close by — as Wardsend is one of the only cemeteries in the world to be intersected by a railway.
Howard Bayley, chair of the Friends of the Wardsend Cemetery, also has divided loyalties. On one hand, he is desperate for the history of Wardsend to be recognised. But he also wants Wardsend to play its part in the regeneration of nearby Parkwood Springs, and part of the Upper Don Trail that will eventually connect Stocksbridge with the steel city.
He says: “It’s a remarkable place. During lockdown, we saw so many more people visiting here. It’s a living, breathing place, and one that is so representative of Sheffield. It’s an oasis of calm surrounded by chaos and clatter. And its unique, I think, to the city, and to the country.”
Only active as a cemetery for 100 years and witnessing its final burials in the 1970s, Wardsend is packed with stories which tell so much about the city.
On 3 June 1862, a riot broke out at Wardsend after a crowd found a large hole in the ground containing coffins, both with and without bodies. Isaac Howard, the sexton, was suspected of unearthing and selling bodies.
During the inquiry that followed the riot, it was discovered that the Sheffield workhouse had been supplying the medical school with bodies for dissection, something that was legal at the time. They were, however, transporting the corpses in sacks, and the law required that coffins were to be used. After the corpses had served their purposes, the medical school was then disposing of the dissected bodies by sending them to Howard to be buried in wooden boxes.
For years, it was believed that the clock faces on St Phillips’ Church off Infirmary Road were only illuminated on three sides, with the one facing Wardsend left in darkness to deter graverobbers. It’s a tall tale, given how far the church stood from the cemetery, but there’s other colourful tales to tell of its inhabitants.
Take Kate Townsend. When she died, news of her death made it as far as New South Wales in Australia. Kate met her husband, whom she married in 1876 in Leicester, while both were travelling and being exhibited due to their small stature. Advertised as “Mr and Mrs Tommy Dodd” — “The Smallest Living People”, they were billed as the King and Queen of the Lilliputians at the 1873/4 Christmas Fair and Bazaar held at Islington Town Hall.
Or George Lambert. Buried at Wardsend, Lieutenant Lambert was a highly decorated soldier who received a Victoria Cross. He spent much of service as a soldier in India, where he won the VC.
The Friends of Wardsend recently hosted an event to mark his 200th birthday and are working with the Victoria Cross Trust to restore his grave.
Then there’s WT Furniss, one of the city’s most respected Victorian photographers. Talking of Tramlines, just look at the crowds in this picture that he took of Hillsborough Park.
Search around the wild and twisty lanes of Wardsend and you’ll find Sheffield Wednesday footballers and its happiest ever fan, and the sad tale of George Beaumont who died when retrieving a football, leaping over a wall and falling several feet to his death. But Club Mill Road’s history is not contained to Wardsend alone.
Further along the track there is a small industrial estate with Chapmans Agricultural taking pride of place. For a city built on its relationship with the river, Chapmans has re-introduced a forge to this section of the Don. The building in which these are housed has now been officially named “The Riverdale Forge” which takes Chapmans back to its origins as in March 1845 Lady Riverdale laid the foundation stone for its main factory, which today houses its presswork and heat treatment operations.
Further still and you can find the Sheffield chapter of the hells angels, but it’s as you leave the estate that another part of history emerges.
The old silver mill now stands abandoned and roofless behind perimeter fencing, unloved apart from by urban explorers and amazing artists who have documented its slow decline.
Old Park Silver Mills was established in the 1760’s by Joseph Hancock who was the first to use water power to roll Sheffield Plate, a fusion of copper and silver. The mill, one of the earliest factories solely producing an industrial semi-manufacture. Its product was used for candlesticks and other items including snuff boxes, tea pots and coffee pots. A part of Sheffield’s crucible of history, but the story got even stranger in the 1980s.
Lew Foley was a maverick from the Black Country, known as the Lion Man of Cradley Heath. He kept his lions at home, where they terrified door-to-door salesmen. You can read more about Lew here, including the apparently urban legend of him releasing lions onto the Malvern Hills.
But back in the 1980s, Lew hatched a bizarre plan to open a nightclub at the old mill, which was already falling into disrepair. There was even talk of his lions making the trip with him. Photos exist of Lew, sans lions, lifting a giant replica silver water wheel on to the site.
Lew and his lions are long gone but the wheel still stands there, rusting and hidden amidst glass and graffing. More recently the current owners of the site put it up for sale.
It could be easy to think of this as evidence that Club Mill Road is a street in decline, somewhere to remain hidden and off the beaten track. Travel further up the lane and you’ll find some stunning skull graffiti by Phlegm, and some superb twin tagging by Mila K.
Reaching its end, another piece of Sheffield history, The Farfield Inn, also stands derelict. Formerly standing in the foreground of the giant Neepsend power station, the Farfield has been bought by a local enthusiast, who has transformed other pubs and even the Blonk Street pissoirs into viable businesses. At the moment though, its biggest commercial pulling power has come from a painting of it by Andy Cropper, which fetched four figures recently.
Having walked the length of Club Mill Road I think I’ve stumbled upon its identity. It’s a place to ignite imaginations, for dreamers to conjure with what ifs and the possibilities, a place to which the weird and disconnected are inevitably drawn. The new age travellers who line the banks of the Don are evidence of the area’s strange pulling power. But it’s more than that. As the Upper Don Trail team which recently carried out a spectacular clean up of the road would testify, the area is on the verge of a renaissance.
Wardsend will soon be connected by a new bike route from Herries Road. Its tracks connect with the outdoor city mega-possibilities of Parkwood and the former ski village. The old silver mill may be about to enjoy a new chapter. Having been disconnected for so long, Club Mill Road may finally be emerging into the light.
- Join Hugh Waterhouse and Christine Handley for a "Wardsend Wander" for Sheffield Heritage Open Days on Sunday September 12th at 11am, and Tuesday September 14th at 2pm. Booking for these events will open on Eventbrite on August 1st. Details here: Events | Heritage Open Days
