A Glance at Sheffield as it was and is page 2

The present principal roads out of the city to the residential West - West Street and Glossop Road - are of comparatively recent date. The old outlet, with Stanage as its moorland destination, was by Broad Lane, Brook Hill, and Western Bank, which then was a broad country road with the far better name of Hallam Gate. Or you could go by Campo Lane and Trippet Lane, which sent off footpaths, one to Broom Hall, and another to Broomhill, and finished itself as a footpath to Hallam Gate past the hamlet of Leavygreave.

Trippet Lane is named after an ancient Sheffield family, references to which are recorded nearly five and a half centuries ago - a fact that ought to make every citizen alert to defend the old names, full of meaning, against any one who would thoughtlessly substitute new names that can never carry a story along the centuries.

Only in quite modern times has the West Street outlet been made moderately adequate for its traffic, and then chiefly through the splendidly helpful influence of the tramways. This might almost be called the hospital route, for on it, or but a little way off it, stand all the mid-town voluntary hospitals - the Royal, founded in 1832 and providing 172 beds - in West Street; and, further along, on the old western route, the Jessop Hospital for Women, begun in 1864, but established in Leavygreave in 1878 by the generosity of Thomas Jessop; the Children's Hospital, begun in 1876, but removed to Western Bank in 1880 and enlarged in 1886; while the Royal Infirmary - already referred to - is near at hand down St. Philip's Road.

In earlier times, Crookcsmoor was regarded as extending right round the hill up which these western roads climb, and including Broomhill and Fulwood Road district, and here, below the Fulwood Road, was (from 1711 to 1781) the Crookesmoor racecourse.

The tides of Sheffield house-building, flowing now here and now there, along its valleys and over its widely branching hills, have submerged and almost effaced the many villages that once were independent centres of rural or semi-rural life, and these villages have become district names in one great continuous town area, welded to the centre by continuous tramway services.

Attercliffe and Grimesthorpe, once manors themselves, have long been absorbed. Darnall and Carbrook have preserved their names, while some of their neighbour villages of long ago have lost theirs. Tinsley has been annexed lately. Bright-sidc village is now in the town, and Wincobank (linked on to High Wincobank, which is a particularly vigorous centre of civic spirit, altogether Sheffield in sentiment), strives just within the municipal border to preserve some individuality. Shire Green, once a leading rural file-making district, has been swallowed up. Pitsmoor is respectably suburban. Neepsend has forgotten that it ever was a village. Philadelphia will be surprised to hear it once was not Sheffield. Owlerton and Hillsborough retain but remnants of their strong local feeling. Upperthorpe and Walkley arc as citified as Portobello and Leavygreave.

Over Fulwood the rising tide of town life has rolled. Heeley is swamped by the housing onflow; Norton Woodseats is absorbed, and is sending the tide along the Abbey Lane valley to meet the stream which has already submerged Millhouses. The height of Ecclesall has not preserved it from approach on every side; and the only villages left intact as villages within the wide city boundaries are Whirlow and Ringinglow. The last to lose its village character, though one of the most sturdy in its independence and preservation of old traditions, was Crookes. Now the lines of houses crown its topmost ridge, and there we will take our stand for a last glance round.

From the Crookes Bole Hills, Sheffield looks forth across the encircling moorlands upon a primitive world that remains, in some respects, what it was before the engulfing city had crowned with its streets all the central hills around the ancient castle site, while it grew to be the world's chief emporium for the steel which gives modern industry throughout the world its gripping force.

Nowhere docs city life lie nearer to primaeval solitude than here. Nowhere can the simpler sciences, in which arc studied the growth of life through all the buried ages, up to man and his latest works, be better studied. Up these valleys- -the Don, the Loxley, the Rivelin, and, further to the left, the Porter and the Sheaf - that pour clown the waters which originally made Sheffield what it is, come, with the seasons, the gentle invasions of plant and bird life, thinning out, so as to be easity studied, as they advance into the bleaker hills. Here is spread the geology of central England, plain and simple, in rounded moorland and rugged inland cliff. Here, almost by our very doors, are breezy heights whose breath gives life and vigour. Beautiful for situation, a perpetual joy to the discerning eye, is this moorland city; and the true son of Sheffield is one proud not only of the romance of his city's past, and the steel-built prosperity of its modern life, but also of its grey-tinted environs, where Nature keeps open house for him.