Porter Lane

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.*

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.

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