Dear Nether Edge Families,
Nether Edge History had planned a guided Family Trail from the Nether Edge shops up to Chelsea Park. Obviously this is now cancelled due to Covid. As we still may take one exercise session a day, please download our trail quiz print outs from the following links.
Originally as a guided walk you would have been given extra historical detail, but even without guides, we think you and your family can have an hour‘s fun by yourselves.
Please follow the current advice and keep your distance from anyone else. We appreciate this could be tricky, so you may have to give up and go home if too many people are about. Do not invite friends to join you on the trail.
Be safe, may we all look after each other, best wishes, from Nether Edge History and Nether Edge Neighbourhood Group (NENG)
Nether Edge History Family Trail- extra notes for grown-ups.
Look for the first four items from the Nether Edge crossroads seating area.
1. The Nether Edge Market sign
We think there has been a market here since the 1880’s. We still have a thriving Farmers’ Market here every quarter.
2. The finial is above Wickwire. Such fancy additions were popular in Victorian times.
3. This is the Byron pub sign on the corner of Byron Road. William Sanders first got the license in 1869 and was described as a grocer in the 1871 census. So was it more of a beer house with shop attached? Lord Byron was a famous Victorian poet.
4. Billy Bones is usually outside the osteopath’s practice. He may be indoors in social isolation though.
5. Violet Bank House stands at the end of Violet Bank. The gardens of older big houses were often sold off to build smaller new ones.
Look at the house numbers. Where are numbers 1 and 2? Gone – to widen the road!
6,7 Look out for the Edge Bank sign on the other side of the road and follow it up. Cobbles like these were the normal method of road surfacing before tarmac. Have you seen cobbles anywhere else in Sheffield?
8. The modern house is at the top of Edge Bank over the fence. It is tricky to see!
Houses of different ages and styles have always been together over the centuries, look at any old town street. It’s a new thing to have a fixation about uniformity.
9. The flying goose on Edge Bank is a weathervane.
10. Meadow Bank Avenue
Elizabeth Newbould had owned the land and began to plan the Avenue in 1896. It later linked to the village shops via Edge Bank. There is a chapter about it in ‘Aspects of Nether Edge’. Famous people such as the Drabbles, Margaret and her sister A.S. Byatt, lived at 38 then 36. There is a chapter about them in ‘People and Places’.
11. Arts and Crafts style house
This style of building was a turn of the 19th/20thC reaction against the very decorative Victorian and Edwardian styles of architecture.
12. Machon Bank Road corner house
This was once Mr Axe’s decorator’s shop in the 1920’s, then a sweet shop till the 1980’s, and finally a junk ‘antiques’ shop until it was sold and converted into a private house.
13. Wisteria Cottage is the last on Cherry Tree Road before it becomes Union Road and there is a plaque giving the date 1765.
14. The Union Hotel
Tradition is that the pub got its name from being built to serve the workers building the ‘Union” workhouse in 1842-44. This sign shows a different origin of the name -the thistle, rose, shamrock and leek of the United Kingdom.
15. These are the original gates and frontage to the old workhouse.
As a result of the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 the town’s poor had to be housed inside the new huge workhouse, with its strict conditions, if they wanted help. Previously they could get help in their own homes. The old smaller workhouses , as the one on Psalter Lane, were then closed down..
16. The pinnacle on the Kings Centre
This is now a church again, and also has a mums and toddler group.
17. The gas lamp at the top of Union Road was erected in 1914. Its purpose was to run off the sewer gas collecting below to avoid a build up and an explosion. It is one of just a very few left in the city. There is a chapter about it in ‘People and Places.’
18. This is the ‘squeeze gate’ stile into Brincliffe Edge Woods.
The odd shape was designed to keep animals out.
19/20 The window decoration is on 178 and the knocker on number 200 on Brincliffe Edge Road.
21. The wildlife chart is to be found on Brincliffe Edge opposite the entrance to Chelsea Park.The wood’s background is of a plantation for wood harvesting not a natural woodland as such.
22. The carved bench is in Chelsea Park. Is the beast an alligator?
23 Chelsea Park was laid out as the private gardens of Brincliffe Towers in 1852. It was built for James Wilson, solicitor and clerk to the Cutlers’ Company. It was later given to Sheffield Council who kept up the park and leased out the house.
The Chelsea park swings are the end of the trail. We hope you have enjoyed it.