Broom & Broom Valley
The area called Broom together with Broom Valley are districts in to the south east of Rotherham centre.
Broom
The name is that of the plant broom (also called gorse, whin, furze or plantagenet) which used to grow in abundance and can still be seem blooming in all its yellow glory in the spring along East Bawtry Road. An old view of Rotherham from about 1740 shows a farmstead on a hill labelled 'Broom'. Up to the 20th Century Broom House and Farm existed near the junction of Broom Road, Wickersley Road and Broom Lane. The farmhouse is now The Homestead public house but I think that the site of the house is now flats.
I have to say that as a child I lived 'Up t'Broom' and that Broom and Whiston were my stamping grounds. My parents bought their house on a new estate which was being built in 1938. Broom and Broom Valley consist of housing estates both private and council built from the 1930s to the 1990s. Before that I think that the land had been farmed, small-holded or allotmented. Knagg's Farmhouse (also called Broom Grange) was stranded with one field behind it in the middle of the estates and the farmer had to travel to outlying fields - I know I picked potatoes in some of them. The field became allotments and is now a housing estate, the site of the farmhouse an old folks' home.
The housing estates known as Grange or The Grange are part of the Broom district.
Broom Valley
Until the 20th Century Broom Valley was open fields, meadows and allotments where the streams meandered peacefully between the reed beds. Really old pathways crossed this area but there is no indication of settlement. One of the main roads out of town passed through Broom Valley before climbing up the hill towards Moorgate at the Mile Oak.
Development along Broom Road seems to have begun in the 1900s and in the years after the Second World war the streams were culverted and houses built over the meadows. There are still two areas of allotment but half of one of these was built on in the late 1990s. I expect that the rest will go the same way in time.
