A Vist to Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet

It was a warm and sunny afternoon when we visited the Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet  near Dore in Sheffield, South Yorkshire. It felt warm and welcoming and had what looked like a fairly new visitor centre with cafe and reception to call and buy tickets in first.

The buildings themselves blended into the landscape which felt tranquil and fairly rural nestled in between the busy road we'd just left and the river and main line railway on the other side.  Of course back in the days when the mill and forge were being used for the manufacture of steel blades it would have been a hive of industry.  Noisy, dirty, smelly and smokey and even in today's very noisy world I expect we would find the noise of the machinery surprisingly loud.

Abbeydale has been a place where metal has been worked for hundreds of years.  From 1697 until 1933 scythes and other edged tools were made there.  It was once the largest water-powered industrial site along the River Sheaf and all the processes of making blades were carried out on the site. 

The first buildings you enter on the site are three workers' cottages built in 1793.  The first two are used as an exhibition area to interpret the history of the Abbeydale site. There is a short film in there too.

The third cottage has been set out as it would have been when a family lived there in the 1840s.

Next to the cottages is the counting house where the workers would receive their pay.  All the accounting was done here by the foreman and his clerk.  I didn't take any photos in there as there was a very enthusiastic volunteer explaining everything to us and it would have seemed rude to wander off and take photos.  I meant to pop back in at the end of the visit but didn't get around to it.

The next few buildings are where all the hard work of making the scythe blades was done.  

The photo above was taken inside what is known as the Grinding Hull.  This is where the formed scythe blades were sent to the grinders who sharpened the edges on  grinding stones which were powered by the wheels in the water mill.

 Grinding was a very hard job and you need both strength and skill to do it.  Of course this was also a dangerous job as sometimes the grinding stones could shatter causing awful injuries and also 'Grinder's lung' was rife as the dust settled in the lungs.

The water wheels were powered by the River Sheaf, water was diverted from the river into a channel which has since become a rather large dam.

Next to the waterwheel was the Tilt Forge where one of the two types of scythes made at Abbeydale, the Crown Scythe were forge-welded by heating a piece of crucible steel between layers of wrought iron, then hammering them together.  The other type of blade made was the Patent Riveted Scythe which was made by stamping out a steel scythe and then making a separate back and riveting them together.

 

Above in the blacking shop the completed scythes were painted with blacking to prevent rusting then they were wrapped in straw rope and  stored in the warehouse.

The Manager's House which stands near the stable and coach house is presented as it may have looked in the 1880s although it was built in the 1830s.  It was still used as a family home after the manufacturing stopped at Abbeydale.  Many of the rugs and textiles have been made by the Hamlet Haberdashers Textile Group.

There are often craftspeople on site working in some of the workshops.  One of the Blacksmith's forges was being used whilst we were there.  There are also many community and family activities and events held throughout the year.

The site is closed on Fridays and Saturdays and entrance costs £4/£3 - children under 16 free.  It's well worth a visit if you are in the area.

Photo Scavenger Hunt - September

Where did September go?  Already it's the last day of the month and the days seem to have gone by so quickly.  We've had a short break in Wales, taken a few walks and visited a garden or two and a  couple of buildings over the Heritage Open Days weekend but mostly we've been at home pottering in the garden and making jam and chutney from the left overs of the produce we have grown.

I think all the photos I've used were taken in September so here are my selection for this month's Scavenger hunt organised by I Live, I Love, I Craft, I am Me blog - here

Shut - a gate in RSPB Combes Valley Nature Reserve, near Leek in the Staffordshire Moorlands.  Taken on a recent Sunday morning walk there.

Copper - Kettle on a shelf in the Worker's Cottage at Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet, Dore, Sheffield which we visited on 20th September.

Wrist- The wrist from the statue of local author Arnold Bennett outside the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, Bethesda Street, Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent which we visited on Thursday last week.

Quarter - a quarter of a Cox's apple, very crisp and tasty it was too.

It begins with a C - Caterpillar, a fox moth caterpillar found on a much used path leading to a shop and cafe at the top of Horseshoe Pass near Llangollen in Wales.  We managed to get it to crawl onto a leaflet we'd just picked up in the shop and we moved it to safety otherwise it would have been trampled by huge biker boots as at least twenty bikes had just arrived in the car park nearby.

Foam - I stood for ages watching the sea hit the rocks at the end of Llanbedrog beach on the Llyn Peninsula where we had walked as far as we could. I was determined to touch the rocks before we started to go back towards the village. 

Scarf - my newest scarf which I've very attached to at the moment.  I was sitting opposite Paul when he took this photo during our trip  on the Welsh Highland railway from Porthmadog to Caernarvon earlier this month.

 Line - the end of the line at Caernarvon on the Welsh Highland Railway. We had an hour in the town before the train returned to Porthmadog through the mist covered mountains, rain soaked landscape and flooded roads and fields.

Nostalgia - when I saw the rag rugs made by the Hamlet Haberdashers Textile Group in the worker's cottage at the Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet Museum I was transported back to my grandmother's house.  When I was a child I used to spend a few days there sometimes and I remember she had several rag rugs including one in front of the hearth of a big black range which she kept polished and where she used to leave bread to rise covered with a clean white tea towel. She made the rugs herself using lots of scraps of material from old frocks, shirts and pinafores with the dark edges made from an old gabardine macintosh.  She used to make the rugs sitting at the huge, scrubbed white kitchen table.

My Own Choice - Gorgeous Dahlias in Mrs Bateman's Dahlia Walk at Biddulph Grange Gardens which is our nearest National Trust Property.  

Click on the link below to find more bloggers who are taking part this month.

 

Beauchief Abbey

On Wednesday we were invited for lunch by my cousin and his wife who live in a lovely village near Dronfield.  After lunch we had plans to visit a local Industrial Museum called Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet.  As we drove along my cousin mentioned Beauchief (pronounced Bee Chiff) Abbey and that in all the years he had lived in the area he'd never visited.  We decided we could stop off for a visit and still get to the Museum before it closed at 4p.m.

Beauchief Abbey church is unusual in that it isn't owned by the Church of England but by the local council.  The church and lands containing the remains of the former abbey were sold to the Sheffield Corporatiom in 1931 by its last owner Mr Frank Crawshaw for the use of the citizens of Sheffield. Services are held there and it is part of the Anglican Communion but there are no appointed clergy and the church is run by its congregation and services are led by volunteer clergy.

Unfortunately we'd missed the church being open to visitors over the Heritage Open Days Weekend so we could only look around the outside.  The land belonging to the Abbey is flanked on either side of the road by a golf course and quite a few people were playing during our visit.

Someone was maintaining the walls with a bit of dry stone walling.

The building of the Abbey was begun in 1176 thanks to the gift of some land by Robert FitzRanulph, Lord of Alfreton.  It was a daughter establishment of nearby Welbeck Abbey.  It was dedicated to St Mary and St Thomas the Martyr and to brothers of the Premonstratesian order.  You can see from the plan above how extensive it was, the black lined areas are the parts still standing or visible as ruins.  The parts at the top would now be under the golf course.

The members of the Premonstratensian order were canons rather than monks and were known as the White Canons.  There would have been about fifteen of them living at the Abbey and as they were ordained priests they would work outside in the local community taking charge of some of the churches in the area.  Robert FitzRanulph granted several churches to the Abbey including those at Norton, Alfreton, Wymeswold and Adwalton.

In 1399 Dronfield church was also granted to the Abbey which also owned some local farms or granges and four or five mills along the nearby River Sheaf.

On 4th February 1537 the monks 'surrendered to Thomas Cromwell's commissioners without giving any trouble or opposition'.  After the Dissolution the Abbey and its lands came into the hands of Sir Nicholas Strelley, Lord of Eccleshall who bought the Abbey and the land and liberty of Beauchief.  In 1648 it was passed by marriage to the Pegge family.  During the 17th century some parts of the Abbey fell into disrepair and much of the stone was used to build Beauchief Hall.  During this time the nave and tower of the Abbey church were made secure and it was used as a family chapel by the Pegge family who lived at the hall.

I must look out for next year's open days because I would love to see inside the church which was described by Nikolaus Pevsner as 'an incongruous but very attractive combination of different elements.'  

Our visit to the Abbey was a very pleasant diversion on a sunny afternoon but we were soon on our way a little further along the road to the Industrial Museum which I will write about in my next post.

A Hidden Gem

The sayings 'right under your nose' and 'hidden in plain sight' spring to mind when I think about the building we visited on Saturday which was open with free entry as part of the Heritage Open Days weekend.  How many times must I have walked past it over the years of both visiting and in the late 60s and early 70s working in the city of Nottingham? 

Hidden away on Angel Row, close to the Market Square is Bromley House.  Its front door nestles unobtrusively between a newsagents shop and a Barnardo's Charity shop.  It looks small from the outside but what we found inside was a feast for the senses and a delight for the eyes.

Bromley House is the home of the Nottingham Subscription Library which was founded in 1816.  It moved to Bromley House in 1820/22.  The first members paid five guineas to purchase a share in the library and then a further two guineas each year to subscribe. 

The house, built in 1752 was the 'town house' of George Smith who was the grandson of the founder of Smith's Bank which is, according to the notes, the oldest known provincial bank in the country.  The house is Grade II listed and is thought to have been designed by the architect Robert Taylor.

This painting at the top of the staircase is of the 1st Duke of Richmond and was moved to nearby Newstead Abbey to keep it safe during the second World War.

The main library room is the hub of the whole place, books are issued and returned here.  Members record the books they loan and return in a ledger.  Current fiction books are housed in this room.

Below is a better view of the spiral staircase which goes up to the gallery where earlier fiction and miscellaneous books are shelved.  Only one person at a time is allowed up or down on the staircase which was added to replace a light staircase in 1857.

The entrance you can see in the photo above by the grandfather clock leads to many other rooms all filled to the gunnels with book both old and new.  Many rooms have been adapted from their previous use and some are dedicated to former members or librarians, plus some associated with clubs and societies.  Through the door is the Standfast Library which is named after the Rev. Dr. Standfast of Clifton who left his library to the people of Nottingham in 1744.  In this room, on the floor, is a brass strip meridian line which was used to set clocks before either Greenwich Mean Time or Railway Time was used.  Upstairs are rooms named after Miss Ellen Harrington, who was librarian for thirty seven years and Dr Robert Thoroton, antiquarian.  This room was rented by the Thoroton Society for many years and is also home to The British Sundial Society. In the room next to this staff and volunteers were explaining and demonstrating the techniques of book binding and conservation.

Through more rooms, after a pleasant diversion to the map room which is light and airy, and you come to the studio.  This was the premises of  Nottingham's first photographer Alfred Barber who set up business in these premises in 1841.  Barber installed a skylight (no longer there), at his own expense and also a circular glass and wood structure which worked on a cog and wheel mechanism as it was turned to follow the passage of the sun.

From the studio you could climb further to the attics which were full of shelves housing history and biography books.  These attics were the servants quarters when the house was still used as a home.  Up in the attic is what used to be the developing room and which now contains the Pauline Heathcote Photographic Archive.

One of the things we wanted to see was the walled garden.  It is one of two walled gardens left in the city centre.  The other is behind fashion designer Sir Paul Smith's shop in Willoughby House on Low Pavement.

The long red brick walled garden is shaded in part by London Plane trees.  Six trees were planted  by the President and Librarian in 1875 but only three remain.  There are many shady seats where members can sit with their lunch.  the garden is a haven of peace and quiet just a minute or two from the busy street outside.

Apologies for the quality of the photo above as the sun was very bright but you can just see the back of the house.

The photos above and below show the height of the brick garden walls against the height of the modern city buildings on the other side.

The gardens were very busy and a photographer was at work taking photos

People were lining up to have their photos taken with the camera below.  Above you can see the unusual sundial which is just across from the back door of the house.

As we left the library there was a huge queue snaking right down Angel Row.  with only an hour left of opening time I wondered if they all got in to see the glories beyond the front door.  Apparently there are tours of the library every Wednesday at 2.30p.m. for a cost of £2 which is great value for all that can been seen.  If you are lucky enough to live in the city or not too far away yearly membership is £104.00 which includes any other adult family member at the same address too. The only downside is that there is no lift so access would be difficult for those who have problems with stairs.

There is lots of information and also links to specific things of interest like the photographic studio or the meridian line on the library's website.  Link above in the text.

Back Home

Last week we sneaked away for a few days break.  We don't like to go away for too long even though our wonderfully kind neighbour doesn't mind looking after our very elderly cat Max it doesn't seem fair to leave her with the responsibility of giving medications and etc for too long.  

Here are a few photos taken whilst we were away. 

 We walked on a few beaches

Tuesday was very, very wet.  We travelled on the West Highland Railway past the pounding and swirling high river in the Glaslyn valley.

 Fields and roads were inundated

River banks were swollen, there was nowhere for the water to go.  The mountain tops were shrouded in mist.

The next day the sun came out and all seemed well with the world again.

 We went beach combing along the beach at Llanbedrog

 We walked some of the coastal path .....

.... and came across some unusual sights, this tipi style marquee was being erected for a wedding later in the week.

 A walk and coffee and welsh cakes at Borth y Gest

The harbour at Abersoch

where it was finally warm enough to do seaside things - rum and raisin on the left and mango and passion fruit on the right. 

 I'll be back later in the week to report on a visit to a very special building which was open yesterday for the Heritage Open Days weekend.