Chris Heath - Denby Dale and Upper Denby: Unknown & Unseen

DENBY DALE AND UPPER DENBY

Unknown and Unseen

By the same author

Denebi Farmstead of the Danes

(Richard Netherwood 1997)

A History of the Denby Dale Pies

(J R Nicholls 1998)

Denby & District From Prehistory to the Present

(Wharncliffe Books 2001)

Denby & District II From Landed Lords to Inspired Industrialists

(Wharncliffe Books 2004)

Denby & District III From Medieval Manuscripts to Modern Memories

(Wharncliffe Books 2006)

Ye Old Townships Denby Dale, Scissett, Ingbirchworth & District A Denby & District Archive Photograph Album

(Wharncliffe Books 2007)

Ye Olde Townships Skelmanthorpe, Clayton West & District Denby & District Archive Photograph Album

(Wharncliffe Books 2007)

Denby & District IV Chronicles of Clerics, Convicts, Corn Millers & Comedians

(Wharncliffe Books 2009)

The Denby Dale Pies Ten Giants 1788-2000

(Wharncliffe Books 2012)

Ye Olde Townships Denby Dale, Skelmanthorpe, Clayton West & District A Denby & District Archive Photograph Album

(Wharncliffe Books 2014)

Unknown and Unseen

RARE PHOTOGRAPHS AND DOCUMENTS FROM PRIVATE ARCHIVES

Chris Heath

First published in Great Britain in 2017 by

PEN AND SWORD LOCAL

an imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

47 Church Street

Barnsley

South Yorkshire

S70 2AS

Copyright Chris Heath, 2017

ISBN 978 1 52671 933 1

eISBN 978 1 52671 935 5

Mobi ISBN 978 1 52671 934 8

The right of Chris Heath to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the Publisher in writing.

Pen & Sword Books Ltd incorporates the imprints of

Pen & Sword Aviation, Pen & Sword Family History, Pen & Sword Maritime, Pen & Sword Military, Pen & Sword Discovery, Wharncliffe Local History, Wharncliffe True Crime, Wharncliffe Transport, Pen & Sword Select, Pen & Sword Military Classics, Leo Cooper, Remember When, The Praetorian Press, Seaforth Publishing and Frontline Publishing

For a complete list of Pen & Sword titles please contact

PEN & SWORD BOOKS LIMITED

47 Church Street, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, S70 2AS, England

E-mail:

Website: www.pen-and-sword.co.uk

This book is for all the wonderful people who have helped to create a fantastic archive for the Denby Dale and district area. Whether they loaned photographs, passed on information, aided with family history or made available their sizeable collections of memorabilia to me or provided technical aid, I am proud to have known them all.

This book is also dedicated, as was my very first one back in 1997, to my dad, though now sadly it is in his memory. It was my dad who encouraged me to research the family tree aged around 12, how big now is the oak tree grown from that little acorn? Thanks Dad, maybe see you again some time.

Robert Gaunt; Tony, Ann and Adam Turton; Catherine Hobbes; Patricia France; Charles Hewitt; Jonathan Wilkinson; Sylvia Menzies; Paul Heath; Linda Senior.

* * *

Any errors or omissions are entirely the fault of the author. Whilst every effort has been made to trace the copyright owners of the illustrations in this book, the author wishes to apologise to anyone who has not been acknowledged. If an error has occurred, this will be corrected in any subsequent reprint of this work.

As this is my eleventh book covering some of villages in the Upper Dearne Valley there may be some among my loyal readers who might wonder if there is anything left to say. It has been awaiting publication for some time as I have held off lest more lost photographs or documents emerge. I find it both immensely frustrating but frankly astonishing when something unusual comes up for sale or is passed on to me and I am always thankful to donors who take the time and the trouble to do so.

This volume is a kind of union between my Denby & District series of books and the Ye Olde Township volumes. The breadth and scope of the villages covered is smaller and the emphasis is very much more on Denby Dale and Upper Denby. These are the villages where I was born, raised and have lived, and the reason for my interest and pursuit of their history and that of the people who over the centuries have made them.

After many hundreds of thousands of words and many hundreds of photos across my previous works I feel Ive got to know some of these people and if I take a walk through the churchyards at Upper Denby or Cumberworth I am not just looking at the words carved into a tombstone. In the vast majority of cases I have come across the individuals named and know something of their lives in old records and sometimes even know what they looked like in life. Im not saying they were all good, but they are, at least, familiar. I feel that with this book I have returned home.

After the photographs sections, which are all published for the first time, there then follows a sort of notes and queries chapter. It follows a chronological timeline but much (certainly the more ancient documents) would have been better to have been included in a Denby & District book. Sadly, these new discoveries will have to stand on their own, as it would be wrong to start repeating myself in order to create a background for them. Of course, I would recommend that for those interested you get hold of previous volumes and familiarise yourselves with the centuries concerned.

There are numberless families who have ancient roots in the area that could be researched and published in some form, but in this volume, I have concentrated on three: the Gaunt family of Upper Denby, which still existed until very recently; the Turton family of doctors and surgeons; and the Senior family of Denby Dale, as a mark of respect to an old friend who is no longer with us.

The biggest surprise with this volume comes with the details of the Denby Dale branch of the Royal British Legion. In all my years researching I have never come across any mention of the society. Indeed, the present-day headquarters of the Legion had no knowledge of it either, but that has now been corrected and the branch lives on again. During the sifting of records I came across notes relating to a group photograph of the committee being taken and reproduced in significant numbers and an enlargement being made to go on the wall of the hut. If only one of these had survived then I would have included it though if any readers know of a copy I could borrow, then please contact me via the publisher.

The Denby Dale and Upper Denby brass bands were once vital components of village life (and competitive ones at that), taking part in village festivals, carnivals, fetes, gigantic pies, Christmas events and suchlike, and deserve to be remembered as much more than my previously published photographs of them. And this partial record of their competition entries addresses at least some of this issue.