Tinsley Area Did You Know? - Tinsley, UK - UK Historical Markers on Waymarking.com

1. Tinsley Sheffield's Port
From 1751 until 1819 wharfs and warehouses beside the canal at the east side of the canal bridge behind you formed the port for Sheffield. Until then the nearest port was Bawtry on the river Idle about 20 miles from Sheffield.

In 1726 the Cutlers Company gained consent of Parliament for a cut to Tinsley and a road from Tinsley to Sheffield. By 1751 the canal had reached Tnsley where wharfs and warehouses were constructed. The canal was extended to Sheffield in 1819.

2 & 3. Tinsley Cooling Towers and Blackburn Meadows Power Station
Blackburn Meadows as officially opened in 1921 by H.R.H. The Duke of York. In the years that followed, the demand for electricity across the country grew rapidly and in 1933 a second turbine hall was unveiled by H.R.H. Prince Gorge.

Blackburn Meadows was now responsible for supplying electricity to one of the largest residential areas in England and to one of the most advanced industrial regions in the world and by 1938 the site was home to a pair of concrete hyperbolic cooling towers for which the site became so famous.

By the 1960s and 1970s blockbuster power stations such as Eggborough, Drax, Ferrybridge and Thorpe Marsh began to replace smaller sites such as Blackburn Meadows. Along with the decline of the steel industry during the period, Blackburn Meadows was mothballed and demolished soon after. All that remained were just two hyberbolic concrete cooling towers, which would stand defiantly for almost thirty years until their demolition on Friday 24th August 2008.

4. The Old Halfpenny Bridge
This bridge at the confluence of the River Don and Tinsley Canal replaced a ferry across the River Don. It was a toll bridge costing a half penny to cross. It was replaced with a modern bridge in 2001.

5. Simplex Motor Works
Earl Fitzwilliam a local land owner who was on the Board of Brotherhood-Crocker Company made some of the land in Tinsley available for a factory to produce motor cars. The result was the Sheffield Simplex. The first car was produced in 1909. Sheffield Simplex considered their main rival to be Rolls Royce. Production ceased in 1920, a reformed company Shefflex Motors Ltd. produced lorries until 1933.

6. Steel Peach and Tozer Templeborough Works
Construction started in 1916 to produce shell steel for the use in the First World War. the works housed 14 open hearth furnaces each producing 60 tons a melt. Also in the complex was a rolling mill capable of rolling a 3 ton ingot to a one and a half inch billet in one heat.

7. The Roman Fort at Templeborough
Built around 54 AD from timber and earthworks thought to be called Morbium, rebuilt in two stages in stone. (Possibly sited close to Deadmans Hole ford an ancient crossing point of the River Don to control the trade in iron?) The area was the southern boundary of the Brigantes tribe. In the early years of occupation this frontier fortress was at the northern limits of the Roman empire.

A civilian town grew to the south of the fort traces of which were found in1947. In 1955 the western route out of the fort was found during the construction of Brinsworth Strip Mill. The route went throgh Highgate Tinsley towards the roman road at Cricket Inn Road and on to Brough in Derbyshire.

The Romans left Britain in 410 AD.

8. The Walker Ironworks
The Walker Family started producing iron goods at Grenoside around 1743, moving to Masbrough Rotherham in 1746. In 1758 they built a new works on Holmes Goit, making boilers, pans, ploughshares and the cannon used on Nelsons flagship 'Victory' at the Battle of Trafalgar.

9. The River Don
In 1637 John Harrison a Norfolk surveyor stated in his report of the Lordship of Hallamshire " the River Don which passeth through the estate, wherein are great store of salmon, trouts, chevens, eels and other small fish."

By 1870 the river had very little life, a roach caught at the time was stuffed and exhibited in Sheffield such was the unusual nature of such a catch.

George Orwell in 1936 describes the River Don thus : "Even the shallow river thatruns through the town is usually bright yellow with some chemical or other." Road to Wigan Pier. Modern pollution controls now mean the river is restored to health.

Rotherham is 2.5 miles from here via the canal towpath.