Winter 2003

Saving our heritage - Beauchief Gardens - And so this was Christmas

Saving our heritage

The Hallamshire Historic Buildings Society was founded in 1971. Its aims are:

• to protect the architectural heritage in and around Sheffield
• to promote interest and pride in architecture and local history
• to increase public awareness of our historic past through its buildings
• to conserve whatever is beautiful in our environment and to improve that which is not.

Members of the Hallamshire Historic Buildings Society have the satisfaction of knowing that they are helping to look after their local heritage. They also, receive two newsletters per annum, and have the opportunity of attending talks throughout the year. Members are also able to join the Society on its summer excursions to places of historic interest in the Hallamshire area, some of which are not generally open to the public

For membership details write to:

The Membership Secretary 45 Greenfield Road, S8 7RR or phone 230 9663

Beauchief Gardens

A small piece of Beauchief Gardens is actually in Beauchief.

The plaque in the wall near to Abbeydale Road reads "This garden and the adjoining sheet of water were presented to the city of Sheffield by the J.G.Graves Charitable Trust April 1935".

This is just one of the many ‘gifts’ given to the City of Sheffield, by the founder of this early mail order company, and which included Graves Art Gallery, Graves Park, the Round Walk etc. This particular gift was awarded at the time of the annexation of Dore, Totley and Norton from Derbyshire to Sheffield.

Close by the plaque a small stream runs between the flowerbeds; this is the head goit or feeder of water into the dam at Abbeydale Works. On the railway side of the park is the River Sheaf which had its level raised to feed the goit, as shown on the plan. It would appear that the bed of the River Sheaf was straightened (possibly for the railway line) and the dotted line shows that the parliamentary borough and ward boundary is faithful to the old route.

If you look over the wall between nos. 283 and 285 you will see the final section of the River Limb emerging from under the road before it joins the Sheaf. The Limb, of course, was the boundary between Derbyshire and Yorkshire. It was also the boundary between the religious provinces of York and Canterbury.

Brian Edwards

Ed. The forthcoming revision of ward boundaries will follow the railway line at this point, loosing us another snippet of history. Oddly Beauchief Gardens and Abbeydale Hamlet will be in Ecclesall, on a narrow strip of land between Ecclesall Wood 3 (Dore & Totley) and Beauchief Golf Course (Beauchief & Greenhill). In the meantime Beauchief Gardens remain sadly neglected by our Council. Would anyone be interested in forming a friends group, to revive the garden?

And so this was Christmas

‘The old Heathens’ Feasting Day, in honour of Saturn their Idol-God, the Papist’s Massing Day, the Profane Man’s Ranting Day, the Superstitious Man’s Idol Day, the Multitudes Idle Day, Satan’s - that Adversary’s - Working Day, the True Christian Man’s Fasting Day..." Such was a Puritan’s miserable view of Christmas day as described in 1656 by a certain Hezekiah Woodward.

Without doubt, Hezekiah would have been a staunch supporter of the Christmas Day fast imposed twelve years earlier, and, better still, the abolition of Christmas ordered by Cromwell in 1647.

In isolated areas like the Peak this ban was widely ignored. Immediately the monarch was restored, though, the festive season was enjoyed with all the old good humour throughout the land; by the 1660's celebrations were back in full swing at the big houses, nowhere more so in the Peak than at Haddon Hall which offered generous hospitality to all-comers during the twelve days of Christmas.

Butter and the butler

Haddon Christmases were legendary and one story has been handed down from the days when the grandson of John Manners and Dorothy Vernon was Earl of Rutland. It is said that a butcher who supplied meat to the Hall, one John Taylor of Darley Dale, delivered an order during the traditional ‘open house’ period and at the same time stole two pounds of butter.

For some time butter had been going missing every week, so the butler of the small-beer cellar and the butler of the strong beer were keeping watch. They saw butcher Taylor pick up the butter, putting one pound inside the left side of his coat and the other to his right.

The strong beer cellar butler came out of hiding and insisted that the 18 stone butcher accept a flagon of strong beer, sitting him right beside the fire. Soon the butter on one side of his body began to melt and trickle right down into his shoes.

"Why Jack", said the butler, "you seem a great deal fatter on one side than the other. Turn yourself round and warm the other side". The uncomfortable man could hardly argue and the butler would not hear of him leaving the fireside until he was well-greased on both sides. As the butcher squelched through the Hall the melted butter was still running onto the tops of his shoes, and the Earl enjoyed the joke as much as anything else that Christmas.

As big as the king

Even at Christmas the luxury of butter was unknown to the parish apprentices at Litton and Cressbrook Mills in the first quarter of the 19th century. The memoirs of one, known only as John, tell of his journey from London to Litton in a December snowstorm, huddled on top of a coach in thin clothing and barely alive. But soon it would be Christmas, with the promise of roast beef and Plum pudding.

The only beef the apprentices ever saw was given to them to be roasted over a fire during the night. Alas, the girls who took on the task were frightened by a ghostly ’boggard’ and they fled; by morning the precious joint was burnt to a cinder.

Once a year, on Christmas Eve, dry flour cake was handed out - without butter - and the apprentices were allowed a pint of ale. In later life John recalled: "To have seen us walking up and down flourishing the flour cake in one hand, and the can of ale in the other, would have made anyone think we were the happiest mortals in the world. We felt ourselves, for once, as big as a king. The spice pudding, of which we were told so many tales, never came but once a year and then consisted of cold, sad, suetty pudding, with two or three currants and raisins in it".

White Christmas

For the more fortunate country child, with a comfortably-off family and a happy home, Christmas usually lived up to excited expectations. In our village - the village being Cromford of a hundred years ago - Alison Uttley described the thrill of visiting Mr. Green’s newspaper shop opposite the junction with Water Lane.

At Christmastime the seasonal stock included cards, showy spangles and baubles to decorate homemade kissing bunches. An upstairs parlour was converted into a toy shop and the odours of cardboard and tin wafted down the steep dark staircase, promising brand new dolls, shiny animals for the model farmyard, clockwork toys and trains.

On Christmas Day everyone walked briskly to church; peals of bells from neighbouring churches carried through the still air, but where the road ran beside the Derwent even the summons of their own single bell was drowned by the roar of the water. Only the squire from Willersly Castle was driven to church, in his fine carriage with coachman and groom, and high-stepping horses.

The white Christmases were loved best, when snow had to be stamped from dozens of pairs of pairs of boots in the church porch. Inside the church had been transformed into a woodland. Alison Uttley recalled how "with senses alert and eyes wide we stared at the flowers and berries, we breathed the fragrance of the evergreens, mingled with the scent of the ladies, and the smell of pomatum on the hair of men and boys, and the paraffin in the lamps. We saw branches of scarlet berried holly on the pulpit and in the long narrow windows... Boughs of yew and trails of ivy were wound round the brass spiral lamp stands at the ends of each pew".

Once the squire, his wife and children were seated at the front of the church, and their servants in their own two rows of pews, the choir led the congregation in "Christians awake, salute this happy morn". The singing of the boys and voices of blacksmith, carpenter, wheelwright, bank clerk and farm workers drowned out the very organ, but it was the resounding bass notes of stout, scarlet faced Mr. Ball that were admired above all.

"A wind like an axe"

Another Christmas Day, that of 1918, was described in a letter from D.H. Lawrence, writing to thank Katherine Mansfield for a parcel delivered by the postman - on foot through the snow - to his cottage at Middleton by Wirksworth on Christmas Day. In spite of his deep longing to move to warmer climes now that the war was finally over. Lawrence was reluctantly captivated by a white Christmas in the Peak.

He and his wife set out to walk to Cromford on Christmas morning - "all white and snowy and sunny, with a wind like an axe... I wish you could have been there on the hill summit - the valley all white and hairy with trees below us... the grey stone fences drawn in a network over the snow, all very clear in the sun. We ate sweets, and slithered downhill, very steep and tottering".

From Cromford the Lawrences continued on foot to Ambergate to be met by motor car and taken to share Christmas with relations - "My God", wrote Lawrence, "what masses of food here, turkey, large tongues, long wall of roast loin of pork, pork-pies, sausages, mince-pies, dark cakes covered with almonds, cheese-cakes, lemon-tarts, jellies, endless masses of food, with whisky, gin, port wine, burgundy, muscatel. We played charades - the old people of 67 playing away harder than the young ones - and lit the Christmas tree, and drank healths, and sang, and roared - Lord above".

And so, whatever Hezekiah Woodward would have thought, that is our kind of Christmas - a Christian Man’s Feasting Day.

Julie Bunting

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