Walkley is a suburb of

Sheffield Sheffield is a city in South Yorkshire, England, whose name derives from the River Sheaf which runs through it. The city serves as the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire a ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

, west of Burngreave, south of Hillsborough and north-east of

Crookes Crookes is a suburb of the City of Sheffield, England, about west of the city centre. It borders Broomhill to the south, Walkley and Crookesmoor to the east and open countryside around the River Rivelin to the north. The population of the ...

. The area consists mainly of Victorian stone-fronted

terraced housing In architecture and city planning, a terrace or terraced house ( UK) or townhouse ( US) is a form of medium-density housing that originated in Europe in the 16th century, whereby a row of attached dwellings share side walls. In the United State ...

and has a relatively high student population. It also has a number of independent shops and cafes.

History

The origin of the name Walkley comes from the

Old English language Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th cen ...

with the original name being "Walcas Leah", meaning Walca's forest clearing.J. Edward Vickers, ''The Ancient Suburbs of Sheffield'', p.24 (1971) The early Anglo-Saxon village consisted of a few structures, mainly farm buildings and workmen's cottages. Most of the area was thick woodland with the few open quarters such as Crookesmoor and Bell Hagg Common being used for grazing cattle. Walkley was mentioned in several documents in the centuries after the

Norman Conquest The Norman Conquest (or the Conquest) was the 11th-century invasion and occupation of England by an army made up of thousands of Norman, Breton, Flemish, and French troops, all led by the Duke of Normandy, later styled William the Con ...

, in 1554 it was described as having several cottages and smallholdings worked by tenants of the Lord of the Manor of Sheffield. By this time the population of Walkley was around 200. In the 17th century Walkley was connected to the village of

Owlerton Owlerton () is a suburb of the city of Sheffield, it lies northwest of the city centre near the confluence of the River Don and River Loxley. Owlerton was formerly a small rural village with its origins in the Early Middle Ages; it became pa ...

by the pack horse track which ascended Walkley Lane and continued to Crookes, it became a turnpike road and a heavy gate was placed across the road where tolls were collected."Walkley Through The Ages", Simon Dawson, Gives much of history of Walkley and that Heavygate Road was named after toll bar. The Old Heavygate Inn was constructed at this point in 1696 and still stands today, it has walls two feet thick. Although local folk etymology says that Heavygate Road is named after a heavy gate, it is actually from heavy meaning muddy or hard going (as in races) and gate meaning road or path (as in Fargate, Waingate, Baxtergate). In 1601 Old Walkley Hall was constructed by William Rawson and stood until 1926 when it was demolished to make way for new housing. By 1860 the residential streets of Walkley had developed considerably and the infrastructure was basically as it is today with members of the Freedom Land Society, Fir View Land Society, Steel Bank Land Society and others building many of the new houses. According to J. Edward Vickers, a local prophecy held that a

volcano A volcano is a rupture in the Crust (geology), crust of a Planet#Planetary-mass objects, planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and volcanic gas, gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Ear ...

would erupt in the suburb in 1880.

Public buildings and amenities

The first place of worship to be built at the location of St Mary's church was a mission church which was constructed in 1861 on the site of an old carpenters shop at the junction of Hadfield Street and Howard Road. The mission church cost £1,000 to build and was superseded by St Mary's, construction of which started in 1867 by the Sheffield Church Extension Society. Building was completed in 1869 at a cost of £3,200, it is in the Early English decorated style and has a 90 ft (27 metre) spire. The

Archbishop of York The archbishop of York is a senior bishop in the Church of England, second only to the archbishop of Canterbury. The archbishop is the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of York and the metropolitan bishop of the province of York, which covers th ...

consecrated the church and the first vicar was Thomas Smith. Local dignitaries made financial contributions to pay for the stained glass windows, tower, clock and bells. There were no schools for the general public in Walkley until the opening of St Mary's church. In 1870 the

Education Act Education Act (with its variations) is a stock short title used for legislation in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States that relates to education. The Bill for an Act with this short title wil ...

was passed and St Mary's school was built in premises adjoining the church at a cost of £2,180, the money being raised by public subscription and a government grant. The school remained attached to the church until July 1978 when it moved to the former Burgoyne Road School, between Cundy Street and Burgoyne Road. The area's other primary school, Walkley Primary School is situated on Burnaby Crescent. The former school premises at St. Mary's church are now part of the

Sheffield College The Sheffield College is a large general further education college in Sheffield, England. The college has six campuses across the city and has 13,500 students enrolled (including 2,501 apprentices) as of 2021. It provides academic, technical an ...

campus. Bole Hill Primary School on Bole Hill Road closed in the early 1990s. In 1875, John Ruskin founded the

St George's Museum The Guild of St George is a charitable Education Trust, based in England but with a worldwide membership, which tries to uphold the values and put into practice the ideas of its founder, John Ruskin (1819–1900). History Ruskin, a Victorian ...

in Walkley. The Museum was intended to foster "the liberal education of the artisan". Climbing the steep hill from central Sheffield, cutlers and other working men were encouraged to enjoy the fresh air blowing in from the Peak District, and to enjoy the extensive collection of books, manuscripts, plaster casts and minerals kept at the museum. An online reconstruction of the Walkley Museum can be seen a
Ruskin at Walkley
By 1890 the premises were too small for the expanding collection and the museum was moved to

Meersbrook Park Meersbrook Park is set on a steep hillside in Meersbrook, Sheffield, England, offering panoramic views over central Sheffield to the north. Within the park are two historic buildings: Bishops' House and Meersbrook Hall. The Bishops' House On ...

. The building was later expanded to become Ruskin House, a girls' home. It has since been developed as private flats. The Collection is currently exhibited at the Ruskin Gallery, part of Sheffield's Millennium Gallery. Ruskin Park links the two areas of Upperthorpe and Walkley. The 20th century saw the building of Walkley branch library on land that was cleared at the junction of South Road and Walkley Road, the library was a Carnegie library built with funding partly provided by

Andrew Carnegie Andrew Carnegie (, ; November 25, 1835August 11, 1919) was a Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist. Carnegie led the expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century and became one of the richest Americans i ...

and its boundary wall bears a commemorative plate to that effect. Due to local funding cuts, the library was transferred from the city council to the community-run Walkley Carnegie Library Group in 2014.

Public transport

There was no public transport to Walkley from Sheffield city centre before 1870; in 1873 privately owned horse-drawn buses were introduced and these were superseded by the electric

Sheffield Tramway Sheffield Tramway was an extensive tramway network serving the English city of Sheffield and its suburbs. The first tramway line, horse-drawn, opened in 1873 between Lady's Bridge and Attercliffe, subsequently extended to Brightside and Tins ...

in the 1890s with single decker trams initially running as far as Springvale before later being extended to South Road. The trams were decommissioned in 1956, and the whole Sheffield network finally closed in 1960, with buses taking over. The tram tracks were not taken up but were just covered over by tarmac. Walkley is today served by bus routes 31, 52, 57 and 95. The nearest Supertram stop is Langsett / Primrose View, served by the blue and yellow routes.

References

{{Districts of Sheffield Suburbs of Sheffield