The Brecks & Listerdale
The Brecks is about 2 miles east of Rotherham Centre on the A631 Bawtry road
whilst Listerdale is the next section along.
The Brecks
I don't know where the name Brecks comes from. It's not, I think, named after the pub which is modern unless there was an older hostelry of the same name on the site. Apparently Brecks Farm was previously on the site. Brecks House is shown on the Ordnance Survey Map of 1840. An espondent has pointed out that 'breck' is the Yorkshire way of pronouncing the word break and thinks that it means broken or uneven land. I've found another meaning from the Saxon meaning a cleared area ie. one got ready for crops.
The town gallows used to be here hence the names Gibbing Greave Wood and Gallow Tree Road but thankfully there are no relics of this piece of Rotherham's past to be seen. The rural past which existed up to the Twentieth Century has disappeared under modern housing.
There was a tollgate here in the days of turnpiking which was somewhere along the end of Toll Bar Road but this has now gone. Stone was quarried here but the quarries are now disused. There are the substantial wooded areas of Brecks Plantation, Dean Plantation and Black Carr which run around the back of Listerdale.
Listerdale
Listerdale is a modern name. The Lister family who lived in a big house on the main road owned a good deal of land in the area and developed it for housing. Listerdale is sort of the infill between The Brecks and Wickersley. I must put my oar in the water here and declare that I was born here at Listerdale Nursing Home which used to be a maternity hospital. I'm not sure what is it now. Somebody has informed me that it is an old folk's home.