Summer 2000

Rural Bradway 1911 - West View Cottage - Bradway Service Veterans

Regular Bugle contributors Roger Davis and Tony Smith combined forces to present this photograph and information about a rural Bradway view as seen in 1911. The photograph belongs to Mr and Mrs Edward Moseley, who have lived at Castle Row Close, Bradway, for 20 years after moving from Woodseats. The scene could be labeled 'guess where this was' it has changed so radically in the intervening years. The two houses in the foreground were known as 'Poynton Villas'. Twentywell Lane can be seen from the left up to the middle top, the entrance to the tunnel is middle left and the back of the 'Castle Inn' and Castle Row houses are beyond the roof of the 'Villas'. In the original you can make out someone waiting at the front door, and a lady hanging out washing in the garden.

'Poynton Villas' were built (from information on maps) sometime between 1876 and 1898, and they were demolished in possibly the early 1950s. Part of the stone wall that ran on the front and sides of the houses survives, the site can still be recognized adjacent to the path that runs from the side of the 'Castle Inn' to Poynton Wood. The whole of the foreground area in the photograph is now covered with trees, no distant views are possible.

A probable reason for building the 'Villas' in this position (so far from any road) is that they were originally part of the Twentywell brickworks complex (just off the photograph to the right), possibly houses for a manager or senior staff. However, according to copies of Kelly's Directories, in later years they were occupied by railway staff, a signalman being one occupant. There was a signal box down in the railway cutting near to this area.

West View Cottage

I remember that when we moved into the newly-built houses on West View Close, the cottage was quite delightful, surrounded by fields on the Bradway side and gardens that sloped down to the River Sheaf. I think that at that time, in the late 1960s, it was owned by a Tony Wright, who sought planning permission to develop the surrounding land. There was a problem over access to the site as the railway bridge was deemed to be too narrow. Later, a small strip of land was purchased from the owner of no.1 West View Close (we were at no.9) so that the bridge could then be widened. The site was developed with the West View Housing as we see it today.

Running through the cottage garden was the disused goit (or water channel) which, in times gone by, lead from the Totley Brook (just above its confluence with the Old Hay Brook) to feed the Bradway Dam just fifty yards or so downstream. In the process, the water would power the Upper Wheel that stood either close by or on the site of Westview Cottage; another channel went directly into the river below the dam. It would appear that Upper Wheel had no conventional dam although the river looks as though it was widened above the weir (which can still be seen today). I was told that the cottage had been part of the mill.

Years ago I remember being able to trace the old goit as a dried-up ditch from the Totley Brook to the approximate position of the Bradway Dam, interrupted only by the supports of the railway bridge. There seems to be little known about the Upper Wheel and it may have been out of use by the mid 19th century. A building is shown on the survey, of the early 1800s, for the new turnpike that was later to become Abbeydale Road South.

There has been some confusion as to whether documents in the past referred to Bradway Mill or Upper Wheel. However both were being used as grinding wheels in 1805 by Thomas Slack who rented the facilities from Edward Simpson. Previous to this date, Bradway Mill was apparently used as a corn mill.

Westview Cottage was unoccupied for the last few years of its life and was eventually demolished around 1975 or 1976 by my estimate.

Brian Edwards

Post Box

Dear Sir
Recently I had a pleasant surprise to receive a copy of the Bradway Bugle Vol.2. No.2. which had been sent to me by my sister Mrs. Joan Moore of Low Edges Rd.

I was most interested in the photograph on page six of the Greenhill Ordinance Depot and staff of the 1940 era as it shows my late Mother and Father, both of whom were employed there at the time and apparently your correspondent Mrs. Muriel Newton worked alongside of Father in the office.
As a family, we lived on site in the Bungalow from 1940 to 1949 prior to Fathers retirement, seeing many changes, especially with the period of the "Cold War".

One of my early recollections was in fact 'cold' being that 1940 was similar to the winters of 1947 and 1963. Very heavy snowfalls occurred that winter and German prisoners of war were brought from the P.O.W. camp at Lodge Moor. Their job being to clear the surrounding areas of the depot and the approach driveway, and were they grateful for the jugs of cocoa we made for them. One would have thought that the Lodge Moor area would have been as bad as or equal to us.

Outside of the perimeter fence, but bounded by concertina barbed wire and covered by camouflage netting were stored many Field Kitchens which in appearance resembled the old "tar burners" of yesteryear, all with metal rimmed cart wheels. Most looked as though they were once horse drawn pre-war vehicles and later adapted for mechanical transport, ready in the event of them being required.
Subsequently the depot became No.67 A.A.0.D. and became a mobilization store for a battery of anti-aircraft guns - that is another story.

As someone who left your area some fifty years ago, I find that your magazine brought back some happy memories. After seeing an item on 20 Well brickyard perhaps one day I may give my views on it. When once you are in your twenties one begins unknowingly to store information but its hard to get the grey matter going when one is past seventy, but reading past local history such as this certainly helps.
Well done to you and your staff, you have done a good job.

Mrs H.R.Foster

Bradway Service Veterans

Roger Davis contributes another article in his series about Bradway's former servicemen, and meets a wartime Pathfinder pilot who also made a name for himself in the fascinating world of sheepdog trials.

Confidence, precision and determination have been key words in George Eye's approach to life. With a family background of farming in the Hope Valley area of North Derbyshire, George has never been happier than on the countless occasions when he has been in the company of Border Collie sheepdogs.

For the last 30 years, he has lived in Birchitt Close, Bradway, and his home can be compared to a shrine to the fascinating sport of sheepdog trials, known to television addicts throughout the country as the 'One Man and His Dog' business. There are photographs and paintings galore of the wonderful dogs at work, fetching and penning wily sheep under the ever watchful eyes of their canny handlers.

George, now 78, and a retired Sheffield wholesale butcher, appears in many of the pictures with some of the dogs he has entered in trials over the years throughout England, Scotland and Wales. The Duchess of Devonshire is there, and legendary members of the national teams (George himself has been in the England team on many occasions) and always dogs, and dogs, and dogs.

But there are also many more treasured photographs in the house, although not on such public display. They show smiling young men in airforce uniform, and the Stirling and Lancaster bombers they flew night after night to smash the heart out of Hitler's Germany. Among them is a signed photograph of the legendary Group Captain Leonard Cheshire Y.C., commander of the elite Pathfinder force, who was destined to be the official British observer on the mission to Nagasaki, Japan, that dropped the second atomic bomb in 1945. This experience was to have a dramatic effect on the rest of his life, and led to the formation of the Cheshire Homes organisation.

As an 19-year-old in 1940, George volunteered for flying crew duties in the RAF, and was first directed to a reception unit at Lords Cricket Ground. He was quickly picked out as a young man of promise destined for special duties, and after only nine weeks of training was flying solo. Intensive training followed in Canada, and in 1943 George was commissioned as a Pilot Officer and made his first operational flight in a Stirling bomber.

The confidence, precision and determination that was to mark his presence in sheepdog trials was already evident, and he was soon flying a Lancaster as one of Cheshire's Pathfinder pilots, marking out the target areas with flares in advance of the main groups of planes on the awesome 1,000 bomber raids. George went on to complete two tours of hazardous duty, a total of 60 missions, mostly in Lancaster B for Beer, with a foaming mug of the landlord's best bitter painted on thefuselage!

"We were lucky" recalls George, who went on to be promoted to Flight Lieutenant. "We often saw other bombers shot down by anti-aircraft fire or German fighters, but we always managed to struggle back to base, although sometimes on only two engines and with the plane full of holes. One night over Hamburg we were caught in a cone of German searchlights at 12,000 feet, but managed to slip away."

B for Beer took part in raids on Berlin and many other German cities, and was flying on the controversial night that Dresden went up in flames. "A lot of nonsense has been spoken about Dresden" says George. "We know that many civilians and refugees were killed, but the city was a vital transport centre and was on the route used to bring German troops back from the Russian Front to build up their strength in France." "We were just young men in those days and there was a job to be done. It was said that out of every 30 men who walked through the gates of a bomber base in England, only five would live to complete two tours".

More than 55 years later, George Eyre says that he can still recall every vivid detail of a Pathfinder flight over Germany in his dreams. He has never flown, as a pilot or passenger, since completing his second tour, and does not like watching war films on television. He prefers 'One Man and His Dog' anytime!

Roger Davis

Go to Bradway Bugle Past Issues

Web site maintenance by
Stratton & English Software Ltd.