A HISTORY OF ECCLESFIELD PARISH - Page 3

Compiled by Joan & Mel Jones of Chapeltown & High Green Archive

In the nineteenth century the village and ecclesiastical parish were the home of the Gatty family who are sometimes known as the Brontes of South Yorkshire. Alfred Gatty was vicar of Ecclesfield from 1839 until 1903. His wife Margaret was a famous children’s writer and naturalist, his daughter Juliana (Mrs Ewing) was even more famous as a children’s writer than her mother, Lord Baden Powell taking the name, Brownies, from one of her stories, for the junior branch of the Girl Guides. One of the Gatty sons, Sir Alfred Scott-Gatty, was chief herald at the College of Arms and organized the coronation of King George V.

Grenoside is the most westerly of the four main settlements and the highest above sea level: the highest part of the village is over 800 feet and Greno Wood to the north of the village rises to over 1000 feet. The name Grenoside, which was first recorded in the thirteenth century as Gravenhou, is made up of the different elements ‘Gren’ from the Old English (Anglo-Saxon) graefan meaning a quarry, ‘o’ from the Old Norse (Viking) haugr meaning hill, and the modern word ‘side’, altogether meaning a quarried hillside. Until comparatively recently the village was smaller than the other three communities, being described in the mid-nineteenth century as a ‘considerable hamlet’. It did not have its own church until 1887, and did not become a separate ecclesiastical parish until 1911. Besides farming, employment was traditionally found in quarries working the Grenoside Sandstone, in the woods (basket making and clog-sole making were specialities in the nineteenth century), and in the light metal trades such as nailmaking, cutlery manufacture and file-cutting. The place is also famous as the birthplace and location of the first foundry and steel furnace of the Walker brothers who later gained fame for their cannons and other heavy castings at their works at Masbrough.

High Green, as its name suggests, began life as a straggling hamlet around a green and remained largely agricultural until the establishment of Thorncliffe Ironworks at the end of the eighteenth century. Together with neighbouring Mortomley it then expanded steadily as an industrial village to house the workers in the nearby collieries and ironworks. It became a separate ecclesiastical district in 1872 with the building of St Saviour’s Parish Church, built in memory of Parkin Jeffcock (whose mother was a member of a well-known High Green family) who lost his life during an heroic rescue attempt at the Oaks Colliery disaster at Barnsley in 1866.

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