Wortley in Barnsley, A place of beauty, character and especially history
Many people know Wortley as the place where the traffic on the busy A629 weaves its way between the church and the even older pub.
Older readers who live locally to Wortley may remember the former Wortley Rural District Council that prior to local government reform, covered almost 50,000 acres from the wild moorlands of the Peak District in the west to the fringe of the once mighty South Yorkshire coalfield in the east. To the south the district skirted the urban sprawl of Sheffield with Wortley village almost at its northerly edge. But that is recent history. Wortley, both village and parish have a much longer history as well as great beauty and character. Wortley has a great deal to attract today; those of us who are fortunate enough to live here have much to be thankful for. Those who visit us have much to enjoy.
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Ingbirchworth and Gunthwaite
Ingbirchworth and Gunthwaite, the Ancient Village Settlements in Barnsley
Memories flooded back to me when I visited the old village of Ingbirchworth on a bright September morning.
On the way I paused at what I will always call Scout Dike Camp, now Kingswood Peak Venture, opposite Scout Dike Reservoir. As a boy I spent a week there, as part of a school trip, in the days when the old army Nissen huts formed the frugal accommodation. I remember taking part in a number of organised sporting activities, including dips in an extremely cold outdoor swimming pool by the ‘res’ and guided expeditions on foot, to Penistone, Thurlstone and Gunthwaite. I guess my interest in the countryside and local history began then, though I did not realise that I had family connections in the area. The camp was started in 1935 by the former Barnsley Borough Council who purchased the huts which had been erected to house the workmen who were employed in the construction of the reservoir. A US Army transit camp was established across the road during the war years. Scout Dike Reservoir, with its filter house and associated buildings was constructed between 1923-28 and covers 38 acres. It is a popular beauty spot and well known for its trout fishing.
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Thurgoland Village
Thurgoland is a rural village near Barnsley with farming traditions stretching back over a millennium
Thurgoland at the beginning in the early 17th century was a thriving metalworking industry prospered along the banks of the nearby River Don for over 350 years.
Thurgoland village straddles the A629 Rotherham to Huddersfield Road, almost 800 feet above sea level and five miles south-west of Barnsley. There are commanding views to the south and west across the Upper Don Valley towards the Pennines. The 2001 national census recorded a population of 1801.
The name Turgesland appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 but different sources suggest different origins for the name: either from the Old Norse meaning Thorgeirr’s or Thurgar’s cultivated land; or from the Saxon ‘The fee farm in the Ga of Thor’ – meaning the rented farm on the land named in honour of the god Thor, or simply the land belonging to Turge. However it originated, it took 500 years until the 16th century before it evolved into the name that we recognise today.
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The Village of Wentworth
Wentworth Village near Barnsley
In Wentworth, there is a sign at the back of the car park on Main Street has the legend that Wentworth was the Rural Community Council’s Best Kept Village in South Yorkshire in 1997.
The intervening twelve years have not appeared to diminish that claim.
Wentworth is a beautifully kept village which has retained all its charm despite becoming ever more popular with visitors. Residents’ cottages live side by side with attractions such as the Wentworth Tearooms, the 13th Century Old Church and the heterogeneous Garden Centre.
Wentworth can trace its existence and origins, although a little murkily, back to at least 1066 when lands around there were given to allies and friends of Duke William, the Conqueror. The name Wentworth comes from a family who lived and owned lands in the area in the late 11th Century. It’s not known how they came to acquire it, but around 1300 one of their number married a Woodhouse, a family which lived outside the village, hence the name of the great house, variously known as ‘England’s biggest end-terrace house,’ or ‘England’s biggest semi,’ Wentworth Woodhouse.
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The Villages of Silkstone & Silkstone Common in Barnsley
The Huskar tragedy at Silkstone sent shock through young Queen Victoria, members of parliament and peers of the realm; and was reported in detail in the newspapers of the day.
Silkstone today is a pleasant place to live and attracts many visitors. Silkstone village rests in one of the most beautiful valleys of Barnsley in South Yorkshire. Pause for a moment on a clear day and look from the main road, by the Huskar monument, towards the medieval church and Pot House Hamlet, and you can’t help but appreciate the magnificent setting of wooded hills and attractive countryside. To explore the area in detail there is a network of footpaths and tracks. A leisurely stroll along the Trans Pennine Trail from Silkstone Common to Silkstone and Barnby (Cawthorne) via the historic waggonway is highly recommended. Families with young children can pause at Pot House and feed the ducks by the beck. For residents, there are good schools and easy access to places of work via the M1 motorway.
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Royston in Barnsley
Royston in Barnsley on a damp and dismal mid-November day.
Never mind, Royston always provides me with positive memories, and it will be interesting to see what changes there have been since my last visit several years ago.
Royston is where I was born, in my maternal grandparents’ house on Newtown Avenue, a neat, inter-war council semi which backed on to a pleasant playing field. After a few months my parents managed to rent a terrace house in nearby Carlton – near Wharncliffe Woodmoor 1, 2 & 3 colliery where my father worked. But visiting Royston to see my grandparents during the fifties and sixties was of course a regular routine. Grandad Charlie Stone worked at the Monckton Coke and Chemical Works.
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Cawthorne is a village in rolling farmland 3½ miles west of Barnsley along the A635.
Cannon Hall, Cawthrone
Day trippers to Cawthorne enjoying Cannon Hall’s parklands near Barnsley and some newer residents may be unaware the attractive village has a diverse industrial past and that 60% of the parish was once opencast for coal.
The district of Barnsley around Cawthrone and Cannon Hall would originally have been densely forested. The first settlement clearing was probably Anglo-Saxon named from cal (cold) and dern (house or building) which had become Caltorne by 1086 when it appears in William I’s Domesday Book. Other sources interpret this as ‘bare thorn bush.’ Whatever its derivation The Conqueror’s survey records that Cawthorne in early Norman times had plough lands, woodlands, pasture, a church and a priest but only a handful of inhabitants.
In 1067 Alric the Saxon landowner was dispossessed becoming a tenant of the Norman lord Ilbert de Laci who was granted Caltorne along with 63 other manors in the north of England. Ownership of Cawthorne passed through many families during the next 600 years until it came into the possession of the Spencer’s in the mid 17th century. The Spencers and Spencer-Stanhopes were largely responsible, over the ensuing 300 years, for creating the estate village which is so appealing today.
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Barnsley, the Changing Face…
Barnsley, in the Heart of Yorkshire
Barnsley people have a great deal of respect for their old market town. Of that there can be no doubt.
Barnsley is a place with a history crafted by hard-working people. It is a place that stands no nonsense, with a style that like its people, says loud and clear – here I am take me for what I am. Barnsley’s very structure and architecture is as frank and straightforward as its populace.
Outside Barnsley the town has an image that has until very recently, emphasised the negative rather than the positive. Relatively high levels of unemployment, unsatisfactory educational performance levels and pockets of deprivation. Old fashioned buildings and unsatisfactory 70’s era “improvements”. Hit by the virtual disappearance of a mining industry on which much of Barnsley’s 19th and 20th century development was founded, and prominent on the borough’s coat of arms, it has taken time for structural change to take place. The closure of local pits one after another and the knock-on effect on suppliers and shop-keepers was a massive psychological blow to communities built on hard graft and local solidarity.
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Thurlstone Village
Thrlstone Village, just outside of Barnsley
Thurlstone may hardly be noticeable to the driver in a hurry seeking to leave Penistone for the Woodhead Road over to Lancashire.
Thurlstone, despite the roadside signs making it clear that you are entering a distinct community, it is all too easy to see it as an extension of Penistone – especially if you think that all there is to Thurlstone is what is directly visible from the main road. But there is much more to Thurlstone and it most certainly deserves to be recognised as a place in its own right.
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Darton
Darton is a village in the Metropolitan Borough of Barnsley on the border with West Yorkshire.
According to the 2001 UK census, Darton has a population of approximately 14,927, and since 2005 has been part of the Barnsley Central borough constituency.
Darton lies on the River Dearne, directly to the east of Kexbrough, and 5 miles north of Barnsley. The name Darton is believed to be an amalgamation of “Dearne” and the Anglo-Saxon word “ton” meaning town. Hence, in ancient times it was known as the town on the Dearne. However, Darton appears in the Doomsday Book as Dentune which could mean that the name originates from a description given to a deer enclosure or something similar. Its sister townships of Barugh and Kexbrough are also in the Doomsday Book as Berg and Chizeburg. Berg means hill in German, but the ‘brough’ in Kexbrough is of Viking origin meaning a fort. The area has a real mixed ancestry.
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Barnsley Villages
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