Place:Brightside Bierlow, 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 Brightside from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72:

"BRIGHTSIDE, a village, a chapelry, a township, and a [registration] subdistrict in Sheffield parish, [West Riding of] Yorkshire. The village stands adjacent to the Sheffield and Rotherham railway 2¼ miles NE of Sheffield; and has a station on the railway, and a post office under Rotherham. The chapelry was constituted in 1854. Population: 10,101. Houses: 2,104. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of York. Value: £300.* Patron: altern. the Crown and the Archbishop. One church was built in 1854; and another, at a cost of nearly £12,000, in 1869.

"The township bears the name of Brightside Bierlow; and includes Bridgehouses, Nursery, and Wicker, which are suburbs of Sheffield, as also the villages of Crabtree, Grimesthorpe, and Neepsend. Acres: 2,690. Real property: £85,768; of which £1,666 are in mines and quarries. Population: 29,818. Houses: 6,243. There are cutlery-works, rolling-mills, a chapel of ease, two Methodist chapels, a library, national schools, and charities £41.

"The [registration] subdistrict is conterminate with the township."

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

Brightside is an industrial area of Sheffeild Metropolitan Borough (or City of Sheffield) in South Yorkshire, England. It is located west of the city centre and on a hill north of Attercliffe (another neighbourhood of Sheffield) and the River Don.

Brightside was recorded in the fifteenth century as "Brekesherth", when it was home to some mills. Brightside Bierlow was one of the six original divisions of the township of Sheffield, including all the land in the town north of the Don - reaching as far as the Wicker and Neepsend.

The first work on the Sheffield and Rotherham Railway was the opening of a cutting in Brightside in 1837. Brightside railway station was opened along with the line in 1838, but closed in 1993. Now the nearest railway station is in Meadowhall (which geographically is in the Shiregreen and Brightside ward) just south of Wincobank. In the 1830s, the only industry in the village was a forge on the river bank.

By 1860, industries were growing in the area, with steel and cutlery manufacture being the main trades. Industry continued to grow, and by the early 1970s, it was mostly industrial, and home to a major railway marshalling yard.

Sheffield Brightside was also the name of one of Sheffield's six Parliamentary constituencies until declining population lead to the formation of the larger Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough.

Brightside Bierlow was a township in the ancient parish of Sheffield within the Strafforth and Tickhill Wapentake. It became part of the municipal borough of Sheffield when it was formed in 1843 and was absorbed into the city itself upon its incorporation in 1902.

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Brightside, Sheffield.

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.