To the Woods at Athersley North Primary School

Here is the children's collage booklet produced by pupils of Athersley North Primary School during the art workshops. They explored the Victorian history of their school as a woodland.

Download To The Woods

Letters from school

Here are a few letters written by pupils of Athersley South to the Hands on History team.

Digging again in 2014

We will be digging more test pits in Athersley, New Lodge and the Smithies this year!

We plan two weeks - one beginning on Saturday May 24th and the other on July 5th.

For the week in may we hope to dig six days of test pits at Smithies. We will be looking for evidence of the mills that were there. There were two mills during the Victorian period.

Barnsley Smithy Mill was north of Smithies Lane. It began as a corn mill during the late 1200s, when it was recorded in a charter of neighbouring land. It continued in this use until 1870 when it was converted to a paper mill. Barnsley Smithies Fulling Mill began as a wool-washing mill circa 1350, probably to process some of the large quantities of wool and fleeces from Monk Bretton Priory, after King Edward III invited Flemish weavers to England in 1338 to train English weavers in making finer cloths. The waterwheel would have been powered by a leat taking water from behind a weir on the Dearne. In 1608-10 a fulling mill ‘belonging to le Smithies’ is recorded. By 1666 it appears to have been converted to a paper mill when it was included in the will of Edward Roades of Monk Bretton. The last documentary reference to it is in 1768 when John, son of John Wood, papermaker of Burton Smithies, was baptised.

In 1854 two Smithy Mills are shown close to each other north of Smithies Lane on the first edition of the Ordnance Survey. The more northerly was for wool and the southerly one for corn. By the 1892 Ordnance Survey both appear to be part of the Valley Paper Works.

Smithies in 1854

Smithies in 1892

We will post more details about the July season here soon.

Please get in touch if you would like to get involved. Call Chris on 01226 722571 or 07963 586767, or email bill@inheritage.co.uk.