Rotherham The Unofficial Website

Hooton Levitt

High town, Hill town or hoo in Saxon times meant house also and Levitt presumably the name of the one time owner. There was a hill fort here in the Ark Ages. Hooton Levitt Hall was demolished in the 1960s to make way for modern housing. I lived in Maltby for a number of years but I never, ever visited Hooton Levitt.

Maltby

By is Norse for settlement. I am sure that I have read it was particularly used by the Danish Vikings and that their patterns of settlement in Britain can be traced by the concentration of villages ending in -by. Malt could be a personal name or indicate that barley was once malted here.

Maltby was once a pretty little village, before the advent of housing estates. There was a cluster of old cottages around the church. I was told that both church and cottages were built largely of stone raided from Roche Abbey after the Dissolution of the Monasteries. For centuries the old abbey was used as a quarry by generations of locals. Nowadays Maltby consists of large, large housing estates, private and council. I believe that Maltby Colliery is still open though probably not for much longer. Wrong - in 2004 there has been a large injection of money which will keep the pit open a while longer. It is expected to close in 2015.

For those who may be interested there is a whole system of limestone caves around Maltby. These used to be open and the kids used to play in them, but I believe that they were sealed off some years ago to stop this dangerous pursuit.

Stone

Stone is a hamlet on the road from Maltby to Blyth and since this bit of Rotherham does not appear in my A-Z I had forgotten of its existence until I passed by the other day. I actually know nothing of its history but since it very close to Roche Abbey to the south and Sandbeck Park to the north it was probably a worker's village. Given its name they probably quarried there.