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Blackburn
I am presuming that Blackburn got its name from the black burn or mucky
river but I could be wrong. The remains of pebble mace heads from the New Stone Age about four thousand years and axe heads from the later Bronze Age have been found along Blackburn
Brook. There is no evidence of any settlement and it is likely that only temporary hunting camps existed. From the Roman fort at Templeborough a road passed along the Brook heading
northwards so there may have been an outpost here. It is first recorded as Blacaburna in 1162.
A small settlement must have existed here through the Middle Ages and onwards close to the iron-ore smelting operations at Kirkstead Abbey Grange and Thundercliffe. There is mention of a fork maker at Blackburn in 1783 but whether these were agricultural or table forks I don't know. By 1825 there were fifteen fork-makers listed in Blackburn but by the 1890s the trade had vitually ceased. There was a dam on the Blackburn Brook, powering a wheel and tilt with a mill cottage where Blackburn Forks were produced. The cottage later became part of a blacking mill which produces foundry blacking for the steel works.
The present village consists of a housing estate which overlooks and overhears the M1 but at least has woodland and farmlands behind it. The boundary between Rotherham and Sheffield runs a very tortuous route down the middle of the valley following the old course of the waterway, so a lot of the works along Grange Mill Lane and Blackburn Road are in the Borough of Rotherham.