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Effingham Street
A private Act of Parliament passed in 1851 enabled the landowner, the Earl of Effingham to re-develop the town centre so it was out with the old and in with the new. Effingham Street, Howard Street & Frederick Street, new street names after his family came into being and considering how much Rotherham has changed, are still around. The area between these three streets forms roughly a triangle on which a complex of Victorian buildings was erected in the late Nineteenth Century. All of these still exist but most are now used for different purposes.
The meeting of Effingham Street and College Street used to be called College Square where the trams had their terminus. I believe that this area was redeveloped in the 1920 and the square ceased to exist.
Bradford and Bingley Building Society formerly the Falstaff Inn built in 1869.
This building dates from the 1860s. The offices of the National Union of Stove Grate Workers founded in Rotherham 1890 were above. The boarded up door and its sign can be seen on the left-handside. You enter the Red Lion Yard to the left.
This building now inhabited by a bakers shop and a mobile phone shop used to be the Old College Inn. Since the alehouse closed in 1970 there have been a number of shops in the units below whilst the upper storeys seen to be various offices. Well - there are several names on the name plate but I've never seen anybody coming or going. In August 2004 this is now the offices of Howells 'The Citizen's Solicitor'. This together with the Woolworth's store which is left of this photo and goes all round the back of these shops with another door on College Street formed pretty much the site of the mediaeval College of Jesus. There used to be part of the remains of the College of Jesus preserved inside Woolies but I think that this has now gone.
More information about the college at Tourism in Rotherham >> Out & About in the Borough of Rotherham >> Thomas Rotherham College >> The College of Jesus.
If I have my bearings right a courthouse was built on this site in Victorian times after the remains of the College were demolished. This in its turn was demolished before the present buildings were erected in the 1920s.
This corner of Effingham Street and Howard Street was originally the Mechanics Institute created in 1853 for the elementary and technical education of the working classes. In 1895 the first floor concert rooms became the town's Assembly Rooms. These were still in use in the 1970s when I attended a wedding reception there. The stained glass window represents Rotherham and shows the Parish Church and the Chapel on the Bridge. I have no idea of its history. To the right of this is the Effingham Street frontage with Rotherham's only statue - of Queen Victoria - can be found to the right and up on the edge of the roof. Vandal proof but not pigeon proof! This was built in 1888 as the Victoria Jubilee Memorial and housed the School of Science and Arts until 1931.
Now Effingham Street is a very strange street. At one time it was the main route out of town towards Parkgate and Rawmarsh. However the building of the bypass - Centenary Way effectively split the road in two with the part above in Rotherham Town Centre, and the other part some way in limbo on the other side of the bypass. The two parts actually look as if they have nothing at all to do with one another - perhaps they like it that way!