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Scholes - Thorpe Hesley
Thorpe Common

These villages are to the north west of the Borough. Thorpe Hesley is very close to the M1 at junction 35 and is consequently very popular with families who travel to work in places like Leeds and Nottingham.

Scholes

Scholes first appears under the name of Scal in a map from the 12th Century. Kirkstead Abbey Grange where the monks smelted iron ore in Medieval times is situated here near where the ore was mined. In my childhood it was a working farm, but thirty odd years ago it went the way of all property and was converted to housing. Scholes was notable for its nailmaking trade in the 19th Century. Nailmaking was a seasonal trade often carried on by agricultural labourers when there was no work on the farm. In 1891 the village was part of the Wentworth Fitzwilliam Estate. There were about 75 houses and the population of the village was 328. The male working population was 102 and 88 of these were miners.

Scholes isn't really a village for there is no village centre. There are three quite separate areas of housing, council and private. The houses on Scholes Lane are about as close to Snob End as you can get around here. Annette has been in touch to let me know that Scholes Lane "stops at the Gatehouse into the village. All the addresses from there on are No X Scholes, or No X Scholes Village, whichever you prefer." However she says that the council "have recently started addressing residents in the village as No X Scholes Lane, which is both annoying, and confusing as some house numbers are duplicated with those on the lane." I have consulted various maps which show the name Scholes Lane running right through the village so you see where the confusion arises.

Thorpe Common

Thorpe Common used to be the common land for the people of Thorpe Hesley. Its not a village at all just a name on a map for a piece of land.

Thorpe Hesley

Mentioned on some websites about Prehistoric Britain is St Helen's Well at Thorpe Hesley. I could find little information but an ancient well would indicate a site sacred in Celtic times. Thorpe is Old Norse for village. The ley is usually glade or meadow, but here probably takes its name from Hesley Hall which is nearby as the crow flies but actually in Ecclesfield, Sheffield. The settlement was most likely was founded about the 8th or 9th Century when Viking farmers settled on lands outlying their Saxon neighbours and for a very long time the basis of the village was primarily agricultural. There was no church in Thorpe Hesley and I think that the village was split between the parishes of Rotherham and Wentworth.

Methodism was strong in Thorpe Hesley. A plaque found at the green on Thorpe Street states "__ John Wesley preached many times between the years 1742 - 1786". There are three old chapels: one disused on Chapelfield Lane, the second converted for residential use on Brook Hill and the third used as the 42nd Thorpe Hesley Scout HQ.

I may well be wrong here, indeed the old memory is increasingly fallible, but not far north of the village I am sure that there was a colliery called Barley Hall or Hole. I'm sure I passed the signs in the long ago. Yes there was. This could well explain the expansion of the village in the 19th Century when it acquired a church built in 1839 and later a school. Holy Trinity church and the school next door were built with funds provided by two local landowners, Earl Fitzwilliam of Wentworth Woodhouse who bought the land and Countess of Effingham of Thundercliffe Grange who funded the school.

Present day Thorpe Hesley consists of sprawling estates around an old village centre. Narrow streets and difficult corners make the old bit of the village difficult to negotiate. There has long been a bypass proposed but it has never come about. All I read of Thorpe Hesley these days are complaints from the people who already live there about proposals for more and more housing development in the area. In 2007 an new community building housing a public library was built.

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