Thorpe Hesley
including Thorpe Common & Scholes
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 Twelfth Century. Kirkstead Abbey Grange where the monks smelted iron ore in Mediaeval times is situated here near where the ore was mined. In my childhood it was a working farm, but about twenty 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.
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
Thorpe is Old Norse for village. The ley is usually glade or meadow. For a very long time the basis of the village was primarily agricultural. 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.
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 I believe that one of the pubs has closed and that this is to be redeveloped as housing.
Village Links
"I’m the admin for the recently launched Thorpe-hesley.co.uk website. The site is aimed at the local village community as well as those outside of the area wanting more information about Thorpe Hesley. There is a picture gallery and forum for discussing all things village and non-village related."Please visit the website www.thorpe-hesley.co.uk.