Place:Attercliffe cum Darnall, West Riding of Yorkshire, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

source: Family History Library Catalog

A Vision of Britain through Time provides the following description of Attercliffe from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72:

"ATTERCLIFFE, a chapelry, a township, and a subdistrict, in the parish and district of Sheffield, W. R. Yorkshire. The chapelry lies on the Rotherham railway, the Tinsey canal, and the river Don, 1½ mile NE by E of Sheffield, and within that town's borough boundaries; and was constituted in 1847. Rated property: £7,306. Population: 5,061. Houses: 1,059. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of York. Value: £180. Patron: the Vicar of Sheffield. The church was built in 1826, at a cost of £12,800; and is in the later Gothic style. There are four dissenting chapels, a Roman Catholic chapel built in 1868 at a cost of £4,700, a newsroom, two public schools, and charities £36.-

"The township is conjoined with Darnall; and has a post office, of the name of Attercliffe, under Sheffield. Acres: 1,270. Real property: £15,412. Population: 7,464. Houses: 1,554. The inhabitants are chiefly cutlers, mechanics, and colliers. Cast-steel was first made here; and cannel coal is mined. Attercliffe Hall is the seat of J. Milner, Esq. An abrupt precipice overhangs the Don, and probably gave name to the township. Archbishop Secker was educated at Attercliffe dissenting academy."

In 1902 Attercliffe cum Darnall was absorbed into the Sheffield, but it had been considered part of the municipal and county borough since 1843.

Attercliffe

Attercliffe is an industrial suburb of northeast Sheffield, England on the south bank of the River Don.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

The name Attercliffe can be traced back as far as an entry in the Domesday Book -Ateclive- meaning at the cliffe, a small escarpment that lay alongside the River Don. This cliff can be seen in images from the 19th century, but is no longer visible.

Westforth or Washford Bridge, at the Sheffield end of the village was first recorded in a will of 1535. It was rebuilt in wood in 1608 and 1647, then in stone in 1672, 1789 and 1794.

Historically a part of the parish of Sheffield, Attercliffe Chapel was built in 1629 as the first place of worship in the settlement. The Town School was built in 1779, and Christ Church was built in 1826 but destroyed during the Second World War.^[1]

In 1686, Richard Frankland set up a dissenting academy at Attercliffe Hall. Three years later, it was taken over by the nonconformist minister Timothy Jollie, who educated students including John Bowes, Nicholas Saunderson and Thomas Secker. Secker, later Archbishop of Canterbury, was frustrated by Jollie's poor teaching, famously remarking that he lost his knowledge of languages and that 'only the old Philosophy of the Schools was taught there: and that neither ably nor diligently. The morals also of many of the young Men were bad. I spent my time there idly & ill'.

In the early 19th century, Attercliffe remained a rural community known for its orchards, windmill, and large houses including the Old Hall, New Hall and Carlton House. New Hall was later converted into pleasure gardens, with a cricket ground, racecourse, bowling green, maze, lake and depictions of famous cities. It was known for its concerts and firework displays.^[1]

Small-scale manufacture of pen knife and pocket knife developed in the early 19th century,^[1] The suburb became more accessible with the construction of first a turnpike from Sheffield to the terminus of the River Don Navigation at Tinsley, then the opening of the Sheffield Canal, running to the south of the village. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there was a frequent proposal to widen this to form a Sheffield Ship Canal, to terminate in a basin at Attercliffe.

Attercliffe railway station opened in August 1871 and closed on 26 September 1927.

Attercliffe has long been an industrial area, but by the early 20th century, there was also a large residential population and high class shops, John Banner's department store (Banner's) in particular. The area declined post Second World War as Victorian housing was cleared which was not replaced, causing the local schools to close, followed by most of the local shops, while some of the local industries closed or moved to larger sites further out of Sheffield.

Adelphi Cinema

The Adelphi was a cinema on Vicarage Road in Attercliffe, Sheffield. It was built in 1920 by architect William C. Fenton. The cinema closed in 1967, and the building was then used as a bingo hall under the name "Adelphi Bingo Club" and a nightclub. It is currently disused.

Darnall

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Darnall is a suburb of eastern Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England. Darnall is approximately east-north-east of Sheffield city centre.

Research Tips

• Sheffield City Archives and Local Studies Library includes archives for the whole of the area now in Sheffield Metropolitan Borough

Address: 52 Shoreham Street, Sheffield S1 4SP

Telephone: +44(0)1142 039395

Email: archives@sheffield.gov.uk

• British History Online (Victoria County Histories) do not cover the West Riding of Yorkshire
• GENUKI has a page on all three ridings of Yorkshire and pages for each of the ecclesiastical parishes in the county. Under each parish there is a list of the settlements within it and brief description of each. The list is based on a gazetteer dated 1835 and there may have been a number of alterations to the parish setup since then. However, it is worthwhile information for the pre civil registration era. GENUKI provides references to other organizations who hold genealogical information for the local area. There is no guarantee that the website has been kept up to date and the submitter is very firm about his copyright. This should not stop anyone from reading the material.
• The FamilyTree Wiki has a series of pages similar to those provided by GENUKI which may have been prepared at a later date from more recent data. The wiki has a link to English Jurisdictions 1851 which gives the registration district and wapentake for each parish, together with statistics from the 1851 census for the area.
• A Vision of Britain through Time, Yorkshire West Riding, section "Units and Statistics" leads to analyses of population and organization of the county from about 1800 through 1974. There are pages available for all civil parishes, municipal boroughs and other administrative divisions. Descriptions provided are usually based on a gazetteer of 1870-72.

• Map of the West Riding divisions in 1888 produced by UK Ordnance Survey and provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time
• Map of West Riding divisions in 1917 produced by UK Ordnance Survey and provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time. In other counties, the map for 1900 has been used, but it is not coming up in Vision of Britain's list.
• Map of West Riding divisions in 1944 produced by UK Ordnance Survey and provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time

• The above three maps indicate the boundaries between parishes, etc., but for a more detailed view of a specific area try a map from this selection. The oldest series are very clear at the third magnification offered. Comparing the map details with the GENUKI details for the same area is well worthwhile.
• Yorkshire has a large number of family history and genealogical societies. A list of the societies will be found on the Yorkshire, England page.
• In March 2018 Ancestry announced that its file entitled "Yorkshire, England: Church of England Parish Records, 1538-1873" has been expanded to include another 94 parishes (across the three ridings) and expected it to be expanded further during the year. The entries are taken from previously printed parish registers.

Finding maps of the Sheffield area has been difficult. The town of Sheffield covered a very large area very early. Whereas in other places settlements became individual parishes, around Sheffield the settlements were all merged into a single urban area. A website produced by the Rootsweb part of Ancestry has a couple of maps that may help.

• A map of the Sheffield area circa 1990 without boundaries, but indicating many of the smaller places surrounding Sheffield itself.
• Another indicating parish boundaries as far north as Ecclesfield and as far west as Upper Hallam may also be helpful.

Wikipedia has produced a "book" which is a compilation of all its articles about Sheffield.