Tag: Eyre Street

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“Best not to explore as there are rumours that the Old Bramall Lane Bridge troll eats anything.”

Bramall Lane Bridge, near former Staples Car Park. Image: DJP/2023

It was one night last summer, and I was taking photographs of skateboarders who had requisitioned the former Staples car park at the corner of St. Mary’s Gate and Eyre Street. There were about thirty of them, showing off to each other, trying to be cleverer than the next.

A small group noticed my interest and obliged by making their skateboards do remarkable things, but the resulting photos weren’t particularly good and soon forgotten.

Staples had long gone, so had Office Outlet that replaced it, and we forget that Mothercare had a shop here, later home to Theatre Delicatessen. The retail park was emptied, bought by Lidl for a new store, but plans had faltered, and the site had surrendered itself to broken windows and graffiti, hastening the rapid descent into decay.

Wooden gates had been erected, preventing entry into the car park, and allowing skateboarders to takeover.

The recent posts about St. Mary’s Church and Ladies’ Walk made me think about the conversations I’d had that night.

Taking a breather from their enactment, three boys sat on the tarmac, drinking bottled water, and chatting about their hallowed space.

I told them that where they were sitting had once been Ellin Street, still listed on maps, named after Thomas Ellin, who used waterpower from the adjacent Porter Brook where it widened into Bennett’s Dam. Here, he founded Vulcan Works with cutlery shops and a steel furnace, and the makeshift skateboard park was where the dam had been.

“That’s cool,” one said, “the dam disappeared, but the river’s still here.”

He was referring to nearby Porter Brook, and the reason Lidl withdrew their planning application last autumn. The discounter was aggrieved about calls to deculvert the river where it flowed under the site, with the loss of car parking spaces .

On the other side of Porter Brook is St. Mary’s Gate, where I took them to see an information board about an ancient structure called Bramall Lane Bridge. Like many Sheffielders, they had no idea about it, and were surprised to learn that it still existed, yards from where they skateboarded.

“Look here,” one of the boys said, pointing to a tongue in cheek warning on the sign.

“Best not to explore under the bridge as there are rumours that the Old Bramall Lane Bridge troll eats anything, especially with her carefully guarded bottle of Henderson’s.”

When told not to do something, lads of that age will do the opposite.

Days later, I saw them again, and they told me that they’d followed the river under the bridge, and then bottled it for fear of meeting the troll that protected it.

Their reaction is common because people don’t realise that Eyre Street, where it joins Bramall Lane Roundabout, is really built on a bridge that starts at the edge of the former Staples car park and ends on the other side of the dual carriageway near Decathlon.

The underside of Bramall Lane Bridge looking towards the former Staples car park end. Image: South Yorkshire Local Heritage List

These days, there is a Friends of Bramall Lane Bridge Facebook group that is responsible for the information board, and for getting the bridge listed on the South Yorkshire Heritage List. That was no mean feat because until the group had applied for its listing, the heritage body was also oblivious to its existence.

But what of its history?

I remembered a letter that had been published in the Sheffield Independent from 1831: –

“Permit me, Sir, through the medium of your valuable miscellany, to call the attention of the Town Trustees and others to this hitherto neglected, though now highly improving part of town. The bridge over the river Porter cannot remain as it is, and if all the owners of adjacent property were to come forward, I am certain the town trustees would not be appealed to in vain for their assistance in connecting Eyre Street, by means of a quadrant or an angle, with Brammall Street. This may be accomplished at considerably less expense than might be at first imagined, and most assuredly it would not only very much increase the value of property in the neighbourhood but would become a highly acceptable substitute for Porter Street, at the entrance to the new part of the town, by throwing open to view that most elegant structure, St. Mary’s Church.”

The letter showed remarkable foresight and within years, a new bridge had been built and Eyre Street eventually connected with Bramall Lane. Had this not been the case, then Bramall Lane might never have become home to Sheffield United FC.

The bridge’s history goes back to days when this was countryside, still a distance from the town that ended where Moorhead is now. At this time, Porter Brook had to be crossed by a narrow wooden footbridge, and horses and carts had to splash through the water to get to the other side.

When the file manufacturing Brammall family built White House and Sheaf House (now a pub), the road leading to the houses became known as Brammall Lane, later shortened to Bramall Lane, and extended across the Porter and would have finished near to where Moor Market is now.

By the 1835 Highways Act, Sheffield Corporation was allowed to replace a wooden bridge with a stone-built structure, and is thought to have been completed by 1845-1846, opening land for development to the south of the town, in places like Highfield, Little Sheffield, and Heeley.

For a long time, it was known as Porter Brook Bridge, and was widened in January 1864, but there were already concerns that the bridge might not be strong enough to carry the traffic that might pass over it. The bridge was now 100metres wide and curved as it followed the course of the river.

This was the height of the Industrial Revolution, and rural land had been swallowed by the town. In 1876, Sheffield’s Medical Officer, F. Griffiths, reported that Porter Brook was full of sewage and the putrid remains of cats and dogs.

In 1877, the Corporation proposed plans to demolish houses between the west of Eyre Street, and the junction of Hereford Street, Porter Street, and Bramall Lane, allowing the extension of Eyre Street to the Bramall Lane Bridge where roads converged.

Once the roads connected, factories and houses were built, even on the bridge itself, but these have long disappeared, and the modern landscape is quite different.

These days, the only visible signs of the bridge are near Staples car park because the other end remains hidden, and most people are oblivious that Eyre Street runs directly over it.

Halfway under the bridge is the well preserved tail goit from the old Vulcan Works (Staples site) that joins the riverbank and has yielded finds such as a Victorian inhaler and oyster shells.

There is also a visible join in the structure about 25metres from the Decathlon end (75metres from the Staples end) that is thought to be the 1864 extension, while the Porter was culverted further from the Decathlon end of the bridge from the 1890s onwards.

Bramall Lane Bridge has stood the test of time, unlike the later culverted section that famously collapsed, forcing part of the Decathlon carpark to remain closed.

The Staples car park is now fenced off and the skateboarders have gone. This week Lidl announced that a revised planning application is pending, and it might include deculverting of another stretch of Porter Brook.

Joint in structure, towards Decathlon end. Image: South Yorkshire Local Heritage List
The other end of the bridge, hidden from view under the Decathlon car park. Image: South Yorkshire Local Heritage List

©2024 David Poole. All Rights Reserved.

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Streets

The gentlemen will be joking that their wives have been taking the air along Ladies’ Walk

It is late summer in 1782, and the sun is slipping behind the distant hills. The ladies of the town, wives of respectable businessmen, clergymen, and doctors, are taking an evening stroll with their friends and their daughters.

The air is fragrant with scents of the countryside: corncockle, yellow-flag iris, harebell, and wood anemone. The long row of trees provide respite from the waning heat, and beyond the wooden fence, cows and sheep lollop in the fields knowing that it will soon be time to settle down for the night.

When the ladies reach the river, sparkling and clear, they might cross in single file, using the narrow wooden bridge, and walk a little further towards the tiny village ahead, where its few houses will already have cast shadows on the ground.

Most will turn around and retrace their gentle steps along the grass path that leads back into town, and where their gentlemen will be waiting, joking amongst themselves that their wives have been taking the air along Ladies’ Walk again.

A decade later, James Montgomery, a Scottish-born writer who had unsuccessfully attempted a literary career in London, moved to Sheffield township and became assistant to Joseph Gales, auctioneer, bookseller, and printer of the Sheffield Register.

On the first Sunday after his residence, Montgomery was encouraged to take a walk along this same path, and where it reached the river, he watched as a horse and cart coming from remote Heeley had splashed its way through the river because the flat wooden bridge was designed only for those on foot.

Montgomery became a hymn writer, poet, and newspaper editor, and by the time he was famous, he had witnessed the growth of Sheffield and its expansion from Alsop Fields, across Sheffield Moor, towards that tiny village called Little Sheffield (now London Road).

Ladies’ Walk subsequently disappeared, with houses, and small workshops built along both sides of the path, and by the time the new century dawned, it had become known as Porter Lane, the road heading towards Porter Brook where a wider bridge accommodated horses and carts.

In time, Porter Lane became Porter Street, one of the shabbiest, dingiest, and dirtiest of suburban streets, far removed from the days when elegant ladies took the night air, but it became the main route between Moorhead and Bramall Lane.

During World War Two, Hitler’s bombs rained down on Porter Street, reducing most of it to rubble, and for the next twenty years or so, swathes of wasteland would be reclaimed by those forgotten wildflowers of yesteryear.

In the end, Porter Street ceased to exist, its remaining buildings demolished to make way for post-war redevelopment, and the stories of Porter Lane and Ladies’ Walk disappeared.

And so, my twenty-first century friends, there is a clue as to where Ladies’ Walk was.

If you travel up Eyre Street from Bramall Lane roundabout, the road bends to the right near Decathlon. Eyre Street became the prominent road into the city centre, but Ladies’ Walk, then Porter Lane, and Porter Street, went straight ahead from where the road still bends.

Imagine walking diagonally through 32 Eyre Street (known to many as Deacon House) at its corner with Hereford Street, across Cumberland Street, through Moor Market, across Earl Street, and through all the buildings until you reach Furnival Gate (once Furnival Street) where the modern H&M shop is now.

Those ladies would have walked from the end of Union Street on the opposite side of the road, straight through the side of the H&M shop, and into this lost and unimaginable rural idyll.

Eyre Street, Sheffield. 32 Eyre Street straight ahead.
H&M, Furnival Gate, Sheffield

©2024 David Poole. All Rights Reserved.

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Streets

Earl Way – while you were sleeping last night

While you were sleeping last night. This is a wet and deserted Earl Way, which lies parallel between The Moor and Eyre Street.

If we go back to Norman times, and the time of Thomas de Furnival, this was thought to have been the site of a large ditch at the edge of Sheffield Deer Park, one of England’s largest deer parks, and spanning a circumference of eight miles in total.

Earl Way is modern compared to most Sheffield roads. It was created in the second half of the twentieth century when this part of the city centre was redeveloped. Prior to this, there were three significant roads in the vicinity.

These were Porter Street, that ran diagonally from Hereford Street, towards Moorhead, and Porter Lane, a narrow road that linked it with Union Lane.

Union Lane once ran from Charles Street, near to the Roebuck Tavern, across Furnival Road (now Furnival Gate) and ended at Jessop Street (where the Moor Market now stands). The only surviving section of Union Lane is behind Derwent House, near The Roebuck (think deer).

In this photograph, it would have run along the left hand side where the former Plug nightclub and Kit-Kat car-park stand. Porter Street would have been to the right.

If we could go back in time, right in the centre of the picture, and in the middle of the road, would have been Porter Street School.

There were two reasons why Earl Way came into being.

Up until the 1930s, this was an area of back-to-back housing and designated for slum clearance. Then came World War Two. German bombs caused extensive damage around The Moor, Porter Street, and Eyre Street, leaving the site to be redeveloped afterwards.

Union Lane disappeared, and Earl Way was built as a link road to Earl Street (seen running across the end of the road here).

And familiar landmarks appeared too, including the Pump Tavern, later demolished to make way for the Moor Market, and Violet May, a record shop, run by a pivotal figure in the development of the music scene in Sheffield.

Perhaps the most dramatic modern building is the Kit-Kat car-park, designed by Broadway Malyan in 2008, and sold for £9m last month by joint owners NewRiver and BRAVO Strategies.

©2022 David Poole. All Rights Reserved.

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Streets

Hereford Street: two photographs seventy years apart

Aerial photograph of Hereford Street (top to bottom) in 1951
Aerial photograph of Hereford Street (top to bottom) in 2021

Two photographs that show how a Sheffield street lost its identity.

Hereford Street is shown as a wide thoroughfare in 1951, a continuation of Charlotte Road, and intersected by narrow St Mary’s Road, and Porter Street (that became the lower end of Eyre Street). It joined The Moor that continued south towards London Road. Note that Bramall Lane roundabout did not exist.

Seventy years later, the outline of Hereford Street can still be seen but is split by two dual carriageways – St Mary’s Road and Eyre Street. Gone are the factories, houses, and small shops, and the Moor-end is pedestrianised, and this section of The Moor lost beneath the Moorfoot Building.

Sadly, this area has become an unloved part of the city centre with Hereford Street falling on hard times.

Most astonishing is that few buildings appear in both photographs. Most were swept away for road development, factories were surplus to requirement, and old houses and shops deemed unfit for purpose.

St Mary’s Church, on Bramall Lane, does appear in both photographs. In 1951, it was covered in soot and suffered from air pollution, but look how large the churchyard was, and how much was taken away to make St Mary’s Road a dual-carriageway.

Buildings to point out in the modern-day image are the South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Headquarters and Moor Markets (left), Decathlon and Deacon House (centre) and, of course, the Moorfoot Building (bottom).

© 2021 David Poole. All Rights Reserved

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Buildings

History in the wall – From Martins Bank to an eyesore

Former Martins Bank, now listed as Cumberland House, on Eyre Street, Sheffield. Photograph: DJP/2021

History is all around us. Keep your eyes open and sometimes you will see something that reveals something of our past. At the corner of Eyre Street and Cumberland Street, set in the wall of a building, is an old night safe. Unused for forty-eight years, it is marked ‘Martins Bank Limited’.

It is an obvious clue as to the origins of this rather run-down looking 1960s building, and tells us that once-smart buildings can become eyesores if we don’t look after them.

A clue at the building’s former use. Night safes were built on the outside of banks, allowing money to be deposited into the bank’s safe outside of bank opening hours. Photograph: DJP/2021

Martin’s Bank was a London private bank that could trace its origins back to the London goldsmiths. Martin’s agreed to its acquisition by the Bank of Liverpool in 1918, which wanted a London presence and a seat on the London Bankers’ Clearing House; the Martin’s name was retained in the title of the enlarged bank which was known as The Bank of Liverpool and Martin’s Limited. The title was shortened to Martins Bank Limited (without an apostrophe) in 1928.

The bank had a presence in Sheffield from 1927 when the Equitable Bank, at 64 Leopold Street, merged with the Bank of Liverpool and Martins. It outgrew the premises and opened a new branch in the Telephone Buildings at the bottom of West Street in 1930. It wasn’t until 1960 that a Sheffield University branch was opened, quickly followed by this purpose-built bank  – Sheffield Moor – on Eyre Street. (Another, on Bank Street, came later).

This branch opened in 1961 on land that had once been the site of Greer and Rigby, Surgeons, and land left vacant after the bombings of World War Two.

Junction of Porter Street and Cumberland Street (in background). No 118, Porter Street, former premises of Greer and Rigby, Surgeons. Former entrance to Court No. 10 on left. Porter Street later became part of Eyre Street. Photograph: Picture Sheffield
Martins Bank in 1963. It did not occupy all the building, following the Victorian tradition of creating shop and office rental space to generate additional income. Photograph: Picture Sheffield
Martins Bank in 1970. The old buildings adjacent were demolished to make way for Deacon House. Photograph: Picture Sheffield

According to archives, this part of Sheffield was too far from the old commercial quarter to be effectively served by the West Street branch. “A beautiful modern building with interior décor which responds to the full blaze of sunshine most cheerfully, or, on a dark day when the illuminated ceiling has to be switched on, creates an oasis of light, warmth and welcome which makes it a pleasure to step inside.”

Photograph: Martins Bank Archive Collection
Photograph: Martins Bank Archive Collection

The ground floor was shared with Olivetti, typewriters, and office machine dealers, while the British Wagon Company occupied part of the first floor.

Martins Bank was bought by Barclays in 1968 and five years later the Sheffield Moor branch was closed – its existence as a bank lasting only twelve years.

The building itself was used for a variety of purposes, even a gym, and is now sub-divided as office space.

© 2021 David Poole. All Rights Reserved

Categories
Streets

Cumberland Street – two photos – 60 years apart

Cumberland Street. Photograph: Picture Sheffield
Cumberland Street. Photograph: DJP/2021

Two night-time shots of Cumberland Street, Sheffield, sixty years apart. The black and white photograph, looking towards Eyre Street, was taken in the early 1960s, and even though almost everything was demolished, it is still recognisable.

The row of shops down the left became Moor Market, including the tall and imposing General Electric Company building.

The old properties down the right were replaced in the early 1970s, including the addition of the Whetstone Public House, later Moorfoot Tavern, and now El Paso restaurant.

Only one building survives – the former Martin’s Bank at the far right corner of Cumberland Street with Eyre Street.

About halfway down are two roads with contrasting fortunes. To the right, South Lane, then a narrow thoroughfare, but significantly widened. To the left, Cumberland Way, lost during Moor Market construction, and now forming the entrance to the market service area.

In the far gloom was the factory belonging to W.A. Tyzack (built in 1958 and demolished in 1984), and now the site of Decathlon.

© 2021 David Poole. All Rights Reserved

Categories
Buildings

Ellin Street: Change ahead for the forgotten Sheffield street

Ellin Street can be seen in this satellite image. The road starts at the entrance to the retail park and follows the line in front of the building. Photograph: Google Earth

Is an outlying part of Sheffield city centre about to be redeveloped?

Theatre Delicatessen and the Forces Support charity shop have been served notice to vacate their premises on Eyre Street by January 2022. Both units were once branches of Mothercare and Staples (later Office Outlet).

It is understood that both properties are owned by NewRiver and Bravo Strategies, which bought The Moor, the adjacent 28 acre estate for £41m.

The former retail park will almost certainly be demolished and there is speculation that it will be replaced with a new Lidl supermarket. Any redevelopment will be subject to planning permission.

Earlier this year, the discounter urged landowners to come forward with the focus on ‘town centre, edge of centre, retail park and metropolitan locations’ which are prominent, easily accessible and have a ‘strong pedestrian or traffic flow’.

Areas of interest included Beauchief, Broomhill, Burngreave, Chapeltown, city centre, Crystal Peaks, Ecclesall, Ecclesfield, Fir Vale, Fulwood, Gleadless, Handsworth, Hillsborough, Holbrook/Mosborough, Meadowhall, Norton and not surprisingly, St Mary’s Gate.

The site was once Ellin Street (still listed on maps) and edges Porter Brook. It was named after Thomas Ellin who had used water power from the Porter where it widened into Bennett’s Dam. Here he founded Vulcan Works with cutlery shops and a steel furnace. The dam, roughly where St Mary’s roundabout is now, was later covered over and the Porter culverted to Leadmill Road.

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Buildings

Central Fire Station

The former Central Fire Station, on Division Street, photographed in 2017. (Budby/Flickr)

This is Bungalows and Bears, on Division Street, a popular bar with students, but you might not be aware that in 2028 the building will celebrate its centenary. In Pevsner’s Architectural Guide to Sheffield, Harman and Minnis describe it as ‘bloodless, Neo-Georgian,’ typical of inter-war building. Sadly, it’s not looking its best these days.

This was the former Fire Brigade Headquarters, built in 1928 at a cost of £39,000, and opened by the Lord Mayor, Alderman H. Bolton in July 1929.

It would be interesting to know how much remains of its interior since its conversion to flats and ground-floor bar in the 1990s.  

Finishing touches to Sheffield’s new fire station in July 1929. Painters can be seen in rather precarious positions. (The British Newspaper Archive)

The fire station was designed by the City Architect, W.G. Davies, and was intended as an extension to an adjacent station on Rockingham Street (1883-1884). A row of shops fronting Division Street from Rockingham Street to Rockingham Lane was purchased and demolished.

The new Division Street frontage was 155ft long, of which 60ft was occupied by the engine room, with accommodation for 10 engines. Inside, the engine room had white-tiled walls, tastefully picked out in blue, a floor of terrayo, and huge teak doors that opened onto the road.

Adjoining the engine room was the ‘watch room’ – a private telephone exchange and switchboard, with automatic fire bells for calling out the firemen.

On each side of the buildings were stairways and sliding poles of stainless steel fitted on each floor, enabling the men to reach the engine room from the first and second floor firemen’s quarters. There was a children’s playground at the rear of the first floor, while the third floor housed a recreation hall, gymnasium, and more firemen’s quarters.

Electric clocks were fitted throughout, as well as a lighting system controlled by the watch room that ensured that when an alarm sounded emergency lights were switched on automatically.

Outside the engine house, in Division Street, two solid bronze flamboyant torch-fitting electric lamps were fitted, each consisting of three torch-shaped, red-tinted electric lamps.

At the back was a courtyard with a 70ft high brick tower used for drill purposes with Pompier and hook ladders.

The building work was undertaken by Messrs. Abbott and Bannister, Ltd., general builders, and public works contractors, of Machon Bank, using Stairfoot Double Pressed Red Facing bricks, and stone supplied by Joseph Turner of Middlewood Quarries. A green Westmorland slate roof was installed by W.W. Fawcett of Hale Street.

The next time you go past, have a look for five different carvings on the building. They include the Sheffield Coat of Arms and representations of four of the old Fire Marks, all executed by Frank Tory and Sons, architectural sculptors, of Ecclesall Road.

The fire station survived until 1983 when a replacement building was opened on Wellington Street, subsequently demolished in 2010, with South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue moving to its current Eyre Street headquarters. Now used as a car park, the Wellington Street site is earmarked to become Pound’s Park, named after Sheffield’s first Fire Superintendent.

Central Fire Station in operational use in 1974. The engine house could house ten fire engines, but by the 1970s only four were housed here. (Picture Sheffield)
The former fire station now requires some restorative work. The upper floors are flats and the old engine house is used as a bar. (DJP/2021)

© 2021 David Poole. All Rights Reserved.

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People

Dr Bartolomé: A Spaniard who made Sheffield his home

Bernard Edward Cammell’s portrait of Dr Mariano Martin de Bartolome (1813-1890), (Image: Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust)

The Story of Dr Mariano Alejo Martin de Bartolomé might be straight from the pages of a novel.

Bartolomé (1813-1890) was born in Segovia, Spain, and came from an old Castilian Hidalgo family, his father being the civil governor of the province.

Aged 8, he became a student at the Artillery College of the Alcazar of Segovia and had lined up a commission in the Hussars. However, Spain was in a state of revolution and the representative system was abolished. Ferdinand VII was restored by the intervention of the French, and the Bartolomé’s were driven out of Spain and their estate confiscated.

Segovia is a Spanish city located in the autonomous community of Castile and León. It is the capital and most populated municipality of the Province of Segovia.

They sought refuge in England, eventually taking up residence in Jersey.

It was here that Bartolomé met Mary Elizabeth Parker, the daughter of Rev Frank Parker of Dore, and they married in 1834. He had no profession, but Mary paid for him to become a medical student at Edinburgh University.

Bartolomé studied under Professor Sir Robert Christison, regarded as a brilliant physician and chemist, and gained his medical degree in 1838.

The couple moved to Sheffield taking up residence at 3 Eyre Street, popular with surgeons and physicians, and remained here for 45 years.

In 1840 Bartolomé was elected one of the honorary physicians to the Sheffield Hospital and Dispensary (later the Royal Hospital) and in 1846 joined the Sheffield Infirmary, later becoming senior physician. It was said that he rode there on a fine black horse and to have jumped the gate when he found it closed. By the time he retired through ill-health in 1889 it was estimated that Bartolomé had treated more than 750,000 patients.

Sheffield Infirmary (Image: Picture Sheffield)

In 1846, Bartolomé joined the staff of lecturers at the Sheffield Medical Institution, later the Medical School, delivering over 3,000 lectures and becoming its president.

As president he was instrumental in obtaining funds to build a new building in Leopold Street, finished in 1888, and after merging with Firth College and Sheffield Technical School it was renamed University College Sheffield before becoming University of Sheffield in 1905.

(University of Sheffield Library Digitals Collection)

His crowning glory was in 1876 when he was elected president of the British Medical Association (BMA) at a meeting in Sheffield. His presidential address was an exhaustive description of Sheffield, its surroundings, some of its trades, their effects on the health of workers, and suggestions as to future legislation.

Bartolomé was painted by artist Bernard Edward Cammell which was presented to him by the Medical School in November 1888.

“I came amongst you as a stranger and an alien, but you stretched out the right hand of friendship towards me, and I stand before you now one of the oldest Englishmen in the room, having been naturalised long before the majority of you were in existence.

“I wish that my portrait may remain in the midst of its givers – those friends whom I have so sincerely and frequently loved.”

Bartolomé moved his house and surgery to Glossop Road in the 1880s, the building on the corner with Hounsfield Road better known now as The Harley bar.

As well as his medical work, Bartolomé was a freemason at the Britannia and Brunswick Lodges (and laid the foundation stone at the Masonic Hall in Surrey Street) and was founder and president of Sheffield Athenaeum club.

In his last few years Bartolomé suffered from heart problems and was forced to give up a lot of work. In 1890, after waking, he attended his invalid son in an adjoining room and died soon after, supposedly “brought on by dressing somewhat hastily in order that he might visit his son.”

His wife, Mary, died in 1863, and Bartolomé married a second time, Mary Emily Jackson, the daughter of Samuel Jackson, who survived him.

After his death, Bartolomé’s family left the city, but his grandson, Dr Stephen M de Bartolomé (1919-2001), a former Sheffield University student returned to Sheffield to work for Spear & Jackson of which he became chairman.

The Bartolomé Papers – a collection relating to the history of the family through both Bartolomés – is held at the University of Sheffield. As a fitting tribute the former Winter Street Hospital (and then St George’s Hospital) became the School of Nursing for the University of Sheffield in 1997, named Bartolomé House in 1998 after Dr Mariano Martin de Bartolomé, and now the School of Law.

Bartolomé House. (Image: University of Sheffield)

© 2020 David Poole. All Rights Reserved.