ECCLESFIELD:
WINCOBANK HALL
By R E Leader
Extracted from the Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 12th and 14th March 1921
"The birds on cloud-loft Osgathorpe awake,
And Wincobank is waving all his trees
O'er subject towns, and farms, and villages,
And gleaming streams, and woods, and waterfalls
Up! Climb the oak-crowned summit
Ebenezer Elliott "The Ranter" 1833
Don, like a weltering worm, lies blue below,
And, Wincobank, before me, rising green,
Calls from the south the silvery Rother slow,
And smiles on moors beyond, and meads between
Ib "Withered Wild Flowers" 1834
Thou only, Wincobank, reign'st undespoiled
King of the Valley
Ib "Rhymed Rambles"
Those of us who are old enough to remember Wincobank when apostrophes like the
above were not mere poetic hyperbole, and who are happily spared a sight of the
ravages of city expansion, received a cruel shock when, a few months ago, at a
meeting of the Board of Guardians, the Hall there was spoken of as in a state of
desolation. Though not in itself a thing of beauty, it was beautiful for situation, and
surely "grieving, if aught inanimate e'er grieves", its once embracing "woods, and
all their echoes" now "mourn". It must not "sink unwept without the meed of some
....... tears" albeit unmelodious. In endeavouring to place on records what I have
been able to gather as to the history of the Hall and its inhabitants, I begin with the
latter.
The family of Staniforth is, says the late Sir Alfred Scott Gatty, in his Ecclesfield
Parish Registers, "one of the most ancient in this district; they derive their name
from a small tenement called Staniforth (or Stanyford, mentioned in 1421: Wheat
Charters pp 22, 27) "lying between Wincobank and Shiregreen". The family can be
traced back for at least five generations to the time of Elizabeth, before we can
establish a possible connection between it and Wincobank Hall. From its younger
branch, which moved to Attercliffe, were descended two of Sheffield's leading
surgeons, and several prosperous mercers. William Staniforth the elder, was on the
staff of the Infirmary at its opening in 1797 and William, the younger, occupied the
same position from 1820. Mr Hunter remarked of the senior William's pedigree:
"Here are three generations of men filling up nearly two centuries, 1652-1834.
Speaking in the reign of William IV, he could say, "My father's father was born in
the time of the Commonwealth".
It is, however with the elder line, which remained at the old homestead, that we are
here concerned. It may be assumed with confidence that they were of the race of
husbandmen cutlers, typical of the district, alternating the tilling of their fields with
the fabrication of knives of riles in little off-shot smithies. A good specimen of the
kind of habitation may be seen today at Bell-Houses, near by, whose owners, the
Smiths, were themselves destined to representation among the inhabitants of
Wincobank Hall. Whether the stay-at-home Staniforths became sufficiently
prosperous to move from Stanyford to establish themselves where Wincobank Hall
stands it is useless to conjecture; but we have the fact that the daughter of Jeremiah
Staniforth who took out his cutler's freedom in 1699 because the wife of a certain
John Browne, or Brown, of Sheffield, sometimes called a factor, more frequently
"gentleman", or as in Hunter's pedigree, "of Wincobank and Sheffield, merchant".
Did he "hang up his hat" in his wife's patrimony, or was the Hall, or what was
destined to become the Hall, provided for her reception hard by her old home?
Although he is not prominent in the annals of his time, John Browne was a man of
some consideration, and if not exactly wealthy, well-to-do. He was one of the
original trustees of Hollis's Hospital (1793); was elected a Town Trustee in 1713,
and acted as Town Collector in 1720-21. It was at this time that the River Dun
Navigation scheme for a canal to Tinsley was being vigorously pushed forward, and
Mr Browne's £300 was among the larger loans advanced to finance the undertaking.
There are in the Burgery Records items as to this loan, which may reasonably be
interpreted as indicating that Mr Brown died, and his daughter Lydia married, in
1727. Then, just as Martha Staniforth had brought John Browne under the
Wincobank roof, so her daughter Lydia Browne, inheriting it made it the next for a
certain John Sparrow, who, through some unexplained migratory impulse winged
his flight hither from London. I have not found him credited with any occupation
not does he figure as taking part in the public affairs of the town. He is usually
dubbed "gentleman" and since the structure of the Hall suggests the third quarter of
the eighteenth century as its period of erection, or alteration, its present form may
be reasonably ascribed, in the main, to him.
In 1785, when he was 82 years of age, Mr Sparrow nominated a grandson, John
Sparrow Stovin, child of his younger daughter to the chance of surviving all other
entrants to the Tontine Inn lottery. He died in June 1789 and was buried at
Ecclesfield His elder daughter and co-heiress, who had married Joseph Roberts, son
of the Rev. Benjamin Roberts, formerly of Upper Chapel, was then a widow, and on
her father's decease, Wincobank Hall passed, for the third time, as in the cases of
her mother and grandmother, on the distaff side. This Roberts family was gradually
dispersed, and the Hall was bought by Mr Jonathan Walker, of Ferham, as a
residence for his mother and sister. Then in 1816, there came a further change,
opening a new chapter in the history of Wincobank.
The Fortunes of the Read Family
About 1765 another immigrant from the south had found his way to Sheffield This
was John Read, scion of a long line of yeoman farmers at Kilsby,
Northamptonshire. He had served an apprenticeship in a chemical works at
Bewdley, and he was accompanied here by his maternal uncle, Samuel Lucas.
Together they established themselves as what was then called "sweep shelters"
which meant refining the dust and fragments left by workers in the precious metals.
Their premises in Green Lane became a veritable Tom Tiddler's ground, where gold
and silver could be picked up in handfuls. It did not all stick to their fingers, but
enough remained to enable Mr Read to retire in early middle-age to Norton House,
and there to maintain a considerable establishment, taking his airing in an imposing
carriage and pair, with a postilion, wearing a bright maroon livery, trimmed with a
profusion of gold lace, crowned by a velvet jockey cap with gold tassel.
Mr Read left his business in the hands of his two sons, Joseph and John, with the
cousin, Samuel Lucas. It is with Joseph Read that this sketch is concerned, but in
passing it may be noted that John Read, the younger, followed his father at Norton
House, afterwards removing to Derwent Hall. But generous sacrifices made for
others in misfortune prevented him from long enjoying that historic seat, and he
died at Ryecroft, Abbeydale Road, in 1862, unmarried at the age of 86. When in
1800, Joseph Read, his elder brother, married a daughter of Mr Ebenezer Smith of
Chesterfield (grandfather of the late Francis Ebenezer and Sydney Smith, of George
Street), he, like his father before him, took his bride to the substantial house in
Green Lane, adjoining the refinery. It was "large and handsome, of red brick with
long sash windows in front, and a bow window at the side". Green Lane will not
strike the modern reader as exactly the locality for a "desirable family residence"
but with its iron palisades, it long survived aloof amid squalid surroundings, a
pathetic relic of the days when it stood among the trees of a pleasant garden sloping
down to the River Don. After the smelting works had been removed to their present
site at Royds Mill, Mr Joseph Read followed them to reside there "in a pretty
rambling sort of cottage, almost covered by a luxuriant vine". It stood amid green
fields, and for it there was presently substituted a larger house destined at length to
succumb to the smoke fiend - but not before, as we shall se it had provided a refuge
to its builder in time of need.
In the year 1816 Mr Joseph Read bought Wincobank Hall from Mr Jonathan
Walker and removed there with his family. Its frontage, north, faced the road from
Shire Green just above the bifurcation north-easterly by Meadow Hall to Rotherham
and due east down the steep him to Brightside. Included in the purchase was a
considerable acreage of agricultural land across the former of these roads, but "the
Capital Messuage" itself, with its gardens and appurtenances, occupied little over an
acre and a half. The evolution of the house was evidently from the east, where
various outhouses, somewhat in the read, suggest the position of the humble germ
whence it was developed into a narrow, two-storey building of stone, containing the
kitchens; afterwards, but not long afterwards, continued by a deeper block with the
same characteristics of masonry - rubble with larger quoin stones flush with the
wall face. This part is of three storeys with sash windows surrounded by wooden
architraves. Internally the room next the entrance, a later insertion, is panelled, and
has an old dog-grate; and a room on the first floor where once was a similar grate.
The large bay drawing-room window is an addition by Mr Read. The staircase is
similar in detail to one remembered as having been in the "Iris" office, in the
Hartshead, and similar examples may be still seen in the old Paradise Square
houses. Mr J R Wigfull to whose kindness I am indebted for these details dates the
house in the main as about 1770-80; certainly the latter half of the 18th Century.
When Mr Joseph Read acquired the property, beyond removing a small old house
and barns which had stood near its eastern end, he concerned himself more with a
development of its outside amenities than with the structure itself. To this end, he
bought from one John Fletcher, farmer, and from Henry Howard, Esq of Corby
Castle, some acres of land reaching behind the house to Wincobank Wood, and
below it to the ancient Ridgeway track leading past the prehistoric camp. And here
he laid out gardens, and orchards, and pleasure grounds, encompassed with
meadows and plantations, whose exceeding beauty was enhanced by the splendour
of the distant landscape.
As bearing on what has been earlier said respecting cutler farmers, it is worth noting
that, among divers neighbouring small tenements, there stood on Mr Howard's land,
and within fifty yards of the Hall, two cottages, with smithy and workshop.
Unhappily Mr Joseph Read was not destined long to enjoy the pleasures of his
charming estate. Before many years had passed clouds rolled over from the
ironworks of his wife's relations at Chesterfield. By long endeavours to relieve their
embarrassments, his resources were crippled, with injurious effects on his business,
and what was worse on his health. Leaving the Wincobank he had so fondly
cherished, he resumed residence at the Mills. But anxiety and disappointment killed
him, and he died in 1837 aged 72. It was a reverberation of the same troubles that
compelled his brother, Mr John Read to relinquish Derwent Hall.
The story of the vicissitudes of fortune experienced in this family does not end,
however, in sadness. Mr Read's second daughter, before her father's death had
married Mr William Wilson of Sherwood Hall, Notts. Their two sons, the late Mr
Henry Joseph Wilson M.P. and Mr John Wycliffe Wilson, succeeded in course of
time to the smelting business and restored it to far more than its original prosperity.
They developed its scope and processes on a scale which to-day entitle it to rank
among the romances of industry.
Mr Read's eldest daughter, widowed after a very short married life by the death of
her husband, Mr William Rawson, a Nottingham banker, returned to Sheffield, and
discharging the liabilities resting on Wincobank Hall, recovered it as a residence for
her mother, herself, and her sisters. There, while conducting a select boarding
school, they abounded in good works for the benefit of their humbler neighbours.
Their cultured refinement and philanthropic enthusiasm made their house a resort
where many leaders of thought and action in literature, politics, and religion, were
sure of a sympathetic welcome, and where crusaders against intemperance, and
slavery, and heathenism, and the social evils that afflict mankind got rest and
encouragement. An especially efficient passport to the hospitality of Wincobank
Hall was persecution suffered by anti-slavery champions like George Thompson,
Frederick Douglas, and William Lloyd Garrison, or anti-papal orators like Father
Gavazzi, or anti-drink enthusiasts like John Ballantine Gough. It was Lloyd
Garrison's influence that banished for ever wine from Wincobank table.
Data transcribed from:
Sheffield Daily Telegraph.
12th and 14th March 1921
Transcribed by
Karen Turner ©2000
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