SKIING UP THROUGH ROTHERHAM

THIS SIGN HAS NO SCRAP VALUE

Couldn't resist a laugh at this sticker I saw on the back of signage in Rotherham's temporary Forge Island bus station yesterday, and had to share!

WICKERSLEY'S HISTORIC BUILDINGS: IN REALITY AND IN FICTION

The Round Houses on Wickersley's historic Morthen Road near Rotherham, South Yorkshire, UK

Above are the Round Houses on Wickersley's Morthen Road as they are today.

I used the local geography as one of the backdrops for my novel 'Goatsucker Harvest' set in 1855.

These gorgeous buildings, once used as a place of worship and a shop, now private dwellings, are the ones that catch our heroine Thirza Holberry's eye and fire her imagination as she is waiting for Lucas to collect the new millstone from the quarry to cart back to Thirza's grandparents' windmill on the outskirts of Thorne and Hatfield Moors near Doncaster.

The quarries were one of lovely Wickersley's claims to fame, once renowned for their high quality "Wickersley Rock" sandstone. Their excellent grindstones were in demand for Sheffield's cutlery industry and exported worldwide. You can still see grindstones scattered around Wickersley and in the village there are still many beautiful old houses and walls built of the local stone.

"To while away the time, Thirza set out to stroll the length of what she imagined was the main street, back towards the parish church of St Alban. She gazed at a pair of unusual bow-fronted cottages and puzzled how the occupants chose furniture that would bend to the shape of the room. Or did they design their own? It must be like living in a windmill, only a windmill cut in half." - Joyce Barrass 'Goatsucker Harvest' ch 25 "Grindstones and Goatsuckers."

Here's St Alban's Parish Church. As Lucas says in the book, the top of the tower is the highest spot between Sheffield and Bawtry and used to have a lantern lit on top to guide travellers by stagecoach in the nights before streetlamps made night like day!

St Alban's Parish Church, Wickersley, from Church Lane

In the story, Thirza is hoping for a quick getaway from the stifling summer heat as she wanders around the village, but Lucas has met his friend from the Old Hall and is getting more than a little merry and incapable of driving their carriage, as he takes more than one drink at the Needles Inn (now Wickersley Social Club, still an excellent venue for a pint or two!)

The former Needles Inn, now Wickersley Social Club

The Inn stands alongside what used to be the main road between Bawtry and Sheffield, before the dual carriageway (Bawtry Road) was built just to the north in more recent memory.

The Gazebo in the grounds of Wickersley Grange beside the Inn, is a listed building reputed to have been where passengers would wait for the stagecoach, dating from the early eighteenth century. More info here on the Historic England website.

The listed Gazebo, just east of Wickersley Grange

Wickersley Old Hall is still standing proud nearby on the opposite side of the road from pub and gazebo, the road across which Lucas staggers dangerously drunk in my novel. Today, it has been converted into flats.

Wickersley Old Hall, south face

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They say the dead tell no tales...

Two of the hundreds of names on gravestones in Wentworth's old churchyard, near Rotherham, South Yorkshire

Visited gorgeous Wentworth village in South Yorkshire to see the Old Church with its medieval tower, 16th century memorial statues, 1684 rebuild by the 2nd Earl of Strafford & its damp & gloomy subterranean burial crypt of the Fitzwilliams built c1824. 

I was amused to see two tombstones nearby, one bearing the name of my heroine in "Goatsucker Harvest", 'Thirza', the other the surname of my villain, (Darnell) 'Salkeld'. Not surprising really, as all my characters bear local Yorkshire names taken directly from my own family tree. What was touching is that the names on these graves were pointed out to me by two people who are enthusiastic readers of my novel! 

Flamborough graveyard also holds links to my next story; and they say the dead tell no tales... 

The Bottom Obelisk? A ginormous grave, at any rate!

Just had a text from a dear friend. He says he and his wife are standing in the huge churchyard attached to St Thomas's Parish Church, Kimberworth, Rotherham, at the foot of "The Bottom Tower".

Don't bother looking it up on Google maps! You won't find it!


I texted back joking that maybe English Heritage should rename the monument referred to, as "The Bottom Obelisk" or something equally grand, and start charging! Though maybe not in the current economic climate!


Knowing my obsession with family history, my friends had found their way, on my vague instructions, to one of my ancestor's graves. I explained that they could hardly miss it. It's the biggest, tallest monument in the whole graveyard!

John Bottom's inscription on monument in his memory

It was built to commemorate and mark the position of the remains of the family of my great great granduncle John Bottom, formerly a local Labour councillor in the Rotherham (Masborough) constituency back in the 1880s, and a prominent local small businessman and publican.


He was the middle brother of three, the sons of William Bottom of Hatfield Woodhouse, a cobbler, and Hannah Huddleston. 

The eldest boy, also William, b 1835, married my great great grandmother Charlotte Barrass in 1861. If he had done so a few years earlier, before the birth of her son Thomas in 1857, who I have many reasons to believe was actually William's son, my own family name would have been 'Bottom'. I am thankful for small mercies, even though my own surname 'Barrass' causes more complications of spelling with the double consonants and the vowel possibilities than 'Bottom' would, though possibly less hilarity!


William Bottom was the closest thing to a father figure my great grandfather Thomas knew, and I count him as my ancestor on those terms. John was the middle boy and moved away from the tiny village of Hatfield Woodhouse where brother William was a farmer, yeast and bacon dealer.

The wrought iron railing round the foot of the Bottom family monument

John and his youngest brother Francis set up a shop on the corner of Providence Street on Masborough Road at Kimberworth. By the size of this grave, his will and the fact he found his way onto the council, he seems to have been relatively successful. John must have been the business brains, the name over the shop, while Francis was the one who made deliveries round the town and liaised with customers, from what I see on census returns.

John worked his way from very humble beginnings as a farm labourer. He married his first wife Frances Earnshaw of Cliff House in the shadow of nearby Conisborough Castle, in 1866, and by 1871 was starting his business as an egg and butter trader while running the Royal Standard pub in Masborough. He then started the shop with Francis, and in 1880 was elected Rotherham Councillor in the Masborough Ward. His will shows that by the time of his death his effects came to £6755 16s 10d.  He also had shares in property on Moorgate, Rotherham, and owned a ring in the form of a snake with a diamond for an eye!

Words commemorating John's first wife Frances and their two infant sons

Sadly, his personal life was shot through with tragedy. He and Frances lost both their sons, Arthur and John before either boy reached his first birthday. Frances followed her babies to the grave in 1889. You can see their names on the Bottom monument.


John remarried, to Annie Moore from Misson over the border in Nottinghamshire, in 1891. They had also had two sons, another John, who died at the Second Battle of Ypres in WW1 in 1915, a Lance Corporal in 18th (Queen Mary's Own) Hussars, and Stuart, who died a few months after his first birthday.


Annie, who was 26 years John's junior, died in 1896. John himself passed away two years later, aged 60, on 2nd January 1898.

The 1901 census shows that his only surviving son John was living with his Uncle Frank at the shop, which carried on trading into the 20th century. Frank and his second wife Annie Elizabeth Wordsworth, a local Kimberworth lass, both survived to see their nephew John lost in the Great War, and the death of his elder brother, my great great grandfather William in 1917, back in their home village.


Frank and Annie's grave is a great deal more humble and modest than John's. They lie in the little cemetery in Masborough itself:

John's younger brother Frank and his wife and son lie in peace in a nearby cemetery

Frank had gone from being porter and assistant to his brother John, to inheriting the business. He is listed on the 1911 census as "Wholesale and Retail Provision Merchant" at the old address, 136, Masbro Street, Kimberworth. No room at "The Obelisk" for him, though after the War!

St Thomas's Parish Church at Kimberworth, South Yorkshire, UK

Quirky signage

Don't you just love to let life's quirkiness and anomalies wash over you and tickle your funny muscles?


Was well enough (just!) to venture out last week and after a fun but exhausting visit to the Rotherham Show in Clifton Park, I later found myself slumped at a table outside the Cafe Rendezvous (sic) in the Travel Interchange AKA Rotherham Bus Station on Frederick Street. Being generally too zonked with beginnings of M.E. meltdown to pursue more intellectual or vigorous avenues, I fell to contemplating their signage.
Spotted that the main signs above the cafe were spelled incorrectly as CAFE RENDEVOUZ (see photo above).


Looked around and noticed that the rest of their signs, on the outside awnings (see photo below) and plate glass windows etc were all spelled in the correct French way as CAFE RENDEZVOUS. A ploy to get attention? A mistake too expensive to put right? 


Reminded me of that ball on a bridge over the Cam in Cambridge where a slice is missing and there's a tale that the stone mason did this as punishment for an unpaid bill. Also made me think of a grave in Finningley Churchyard near Doncaster where all the "N"s in the inscription are backwards (see bottom photo). Unpaid bill or ignorance? Willful or witless? Answers on a postcard. The Rende(z)vous/z makes a mean cappuccino, though.