Place:Ecclesall Bierlow, West Riding of Yorkshire, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

source: Family History Library Catalog

source: Family History Library Catalog

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

"ECCLESALL-BIERLOW, a township, a chapelry, a [registration] sub-district, and a [registration] district in [the West Riding of] Yorkshire. The township lies on the verge of the county, within Sheffield parish and borough, 3 miles SW of Sheffield town; but it includes outskirts of that town, together with numerous hamlets, and is practically a suburb of Sheffield. The hamlets in it are Barber Nook, Broomhall, Whirlow, Greystones, Hallamgate, Sharrowmoor, Sharrowvale, Sharrowhead, Little Sheffield, Milnhouses, Carterknowl, Bannercross, Buttonhill, Silverhill, Little Common, Abbeydale, Cherrytreehill, Machonbank, Brencliffe Edge, Upper and Nether Edge, Dobbinhill, Whiteley Wood, Bents Green, Broadoak Green, Highfield, and part of Crooks and Crooks Moor. The township has a post office, of the name of Ecclesall, under Sheffield; and it shares in the cutlery and hardware trade of Sheffield, and has partaken largely of that town's prosperity. Acres: 4,400. Real property: £103,355; of which £300 are in mines, and £280 in quarries. Population in 1851: 24,552; in 1861: 38,771. Houses: 7,960."

"The chapelry includes only a small part of the township, and was constituted in 1849; but the chapelry of Crooks, and parts of several chapelries of Sheffield, are also in the township. Population of Ecclesall chapelry: 2,869. Houses: 484. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of York. Value: £350. Patron: the Vicar of Sheffield. The church stands near Bannercross, near the site of a previous church which belonged to Beauchief abbey. Charities, £68."

All of the hamlets listed above have been redirected here.

Post-1974 description

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

Ecclesall Ward which includes the neighbourhoods of Bents Green, Ecclesall, Greystones, Millhouses, and Ringinglow is one of the 28 electoral wards in Sheffield Metropolitan Borough of City of Sheffield, England. It is located in the southwestern part of the city and covers an area of 9.4 km2. The population of this ward in 2007 was 19,211 people in 7,626 households (local estimate), reducing to 6,657 at the 2011 UK census.

History

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

Ecclesall electoral ward was created 1934 when the old Ecclesall Bierlow ward was divided into Ecclesall, Broomhill and Hallam.

The boundaries of the ward include about half of the area that was historically known as Ecclesall Bierlow—one of the six 'townships' that made up the old Parish of Sheffield. Ecclesall Bierlow encompassed most of the land between the River Sheaf and the Porter Brook from The Moor to Ringinglow. It also included the areas of Broomhall and Crookesmoor to the north of Porter Brook. Though this area contained numerous small villages and hamlets, there was never a village called Ecclesall.

At the time of the Domesday Book (1086) Ecclesall was a part of the manor of Hallam. The name is first found about 150 years later in the name of Sir Ralphus De Ecclesall a knight of the realm who had settled in the area. The De Ecclesall family gave land to the monks at Beauchief (then in Derbyshire) and established a corn mill on the river Sheaf, which they subsequently also gave to Beauchief Abbey (located in Beauchief). Many of the buildings of Ecclesall corn mill can still be seen at the northern end of Millhouses park—the district of Millhouses taking its name from this mill. In payment for the mill the monks of Beauchief were to provide a canon to say prayers daily at the Ecclesall chapel. These services continued at the chapel until the Dissolution of the Monasteries (1530s) when Beauchief Abbey was abandoned. The chapel was restored in 1622 but was demolished when the present church was built nearby in 1788.

Until the 19th century Ecclesall Bierlow was very sparsely populated—-in 1801 there were just 5362 people. This changed with the coming of the industrial revolution and the subsequent expansion of nearby Sheffield and by 1831 the population had increased to 14,239. In 1837 the Ecclesall Bierlow Poor Law Union came into being. As well as Ecclesall Bierlow, this encompassed Nether Hallam, Upper Hallam in the West Riding and Beauchief, Dore, Norton, and Totley in Derbyshire. A workhouse was built on Cherry Tree Hill at Nether Edge. In 1929 the Ecclesall Bierlow Workhouse was renamed Nether Edge Hospital and it remained in use as a hospital into the 1990s.

Historic sites within the ward include Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet and Shepherd Wheel (both now museums).

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.