Attercliffe still survives. Since starting its life as a pretty country village. To becoming one of the most powerful industrial centres in the world. Then through its mass decline and demolition. To its current attempt at regeneration today. Other parts of Sheffield have also seen such a change. But nothing as dramatic as Attercliffe. Since dramatic change in the early 1960's.The population has dropped from over 10,000 down to around 300.Over the same time period it has seen its jobs drop from 45,000 down to 18,000.But due to its redevelopment, it has now risen to over 45,000.But in a totally different industry.
The name Attercliffe is believed to mean "at the cliff”. And is listed in the Doomsday book as "Ateclive".One of its most important features was its flatness in the Lower Don Valley. In comparison to the generally hilly Sheffield only two miles away. Not much is recorded of the place. Until the 17th century. Although in 1587 two water powered iron forges existed there. They belonged to George Talbot; Earl of Shrewsbury Who was also the jailer of Mary Queen of Scots. One of these sites is still occupied by Sanderson Kayser's Newhall Road Works. It was termed "Attercliffe cum Darnall" for administrative purposes. This term stayed with the small township until the 20th century.
Attercliffe’s first and most important industrial figure was Benjamin Huntsman, a staunch Quaker. He built his first commercial crucible furnace there in 1751.And thus laid the foundation of the modern steel industry and Sheffield’s predominance in it for over two centuries.Huntsmans invention did not,however,immediately transform the village.
Not until the area became more accessible through innovations in transport did that occur.
In 1806 Attercliffe could still be described in idyllic terms as “the village studded with plantations and orchards that overhang the footpaths in many parts of the main street”, whilst “the immediate surroundings are those of rural beauty”.
Most villages around Sheffield specialised in the small scale manufacturer of tools or cutlery combined with farming. The speciality of Attercliffe was scissors, but it also had a pottery a glass works and several small coal mines on the common.
Developments in transport were soon to bring rapid change. The turnpiking of Attercliffe road and Worksop Road confirmed Attercliffe as the centre for the valley and a significant stage coach stop (hence some of the pub names: Coach and Horses – The Travellers etc.The Sheffield and Tinsley Canal, opened in 1819, passed through the village and brought cheap coal from South Yorkshire and Swedish iron, as well as providing a convenient outlet for Sheffield-made products. Now steam powered factories began to line the canal from Attercliffe to Sheffield, and new coal mines were opened at Tinsley Park, Attercliffe and Sheffield Park
Anticipation of the canal encouraged the Enclosure by Act of Parliament of 280 acres of common land round the village. As was usually the case ,most of the land went to established local landowners and the villagers lost not only the three big medieval fields between Attercliffe and Darnall ,but even the ancient village green or “Cocked Hat Piece “Lack of opposition was claimed to be due to the lack of many men who were awayin Wellington’s armies. The local historian Joseph Hunter called it ‘one of the most selfish enclosure acts of ever passed.
The one event which triggered off wholesale development of the valley was the opening of the Sheffield to Rotherham Railway in 1838.New heavy engineering and steelworks then started to advance rapidly along the railway between Savile Street and Carlisle Street. Led by such famous firms such as Cammells, Firths, John Browns, Vickers and Spear & Jackson.
The new works and mines created an insatiable demand for labour, bringing in immigrants from even farther away. In 1811 the population of Attercliffe and Darnall was 2,673.By 1872 it was 17,447 and ten years later 26,968.By the end of the armaments boom of the First World War it had reached a peak of 50,000.
In the 1870s Attercliffe became the centre of a vast new industrial suburb where factories and houses were being thrown up in unplanned profusion.”A few brief moments transforms breathing space into rows of habitations more or less jerry built “Quoted the Attercliffe Almanack of 1897.In 1873 Sheffield’s first horse drawn tram route ran along Attercliffe Road from the town centre too.
At first many leading industrialists themselves lived in Attercliffe, notably Joseph Bradshaw, Samuel Jackson, the huntsmans, Jabez Shipman, Ambrose Shardlow and Joseph Jonas. Several served as local councillors for the area, but as the noise and smoke increased they moved one by one to more rural or suburban surroundings. Leaving Attercliffe to their workers.
Between 1870 and 1960 the Lower Don Valley remained one of the classic industrial landscapes of Britain, with some of the worst pollution in the world. Only Pittsburg and Dusseldorf –also steel cities, were considered dirtier. Five hundred tons of soot fell on each square mile of the valley annually. Many former East End housewives’s recall changing net curtains twice a week. And babies could not safely be left outside.
Drop hammers and, rolling mills and coke ovens worked night and day in close proximity to schools and houses. Many dwellings were built back-to-back around courtyards over which towered the steelworks
Attercliffe’s first and most important industrial figure was Benjamin Huntsman, a staunch Quaker. He built his first commercial crucible furnace there in 1751.And thus laid the foundation of the modern steel industry and Sheffield’s predominance in it for over two centuries.Huntsmans invention did not,however,immediately transform the village.
