Stocksbridge

Stocksbridge is a town and civil parish, in the City of Sheffield, in South Yorkshire, England. Historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, it lies just to the east of the Peak District. The town is located in the steep-sided valley of the Little Don River, below the Underbank Reservoir. It blends into the areas of Deepcar, Bolsterstone and the eastern end of Ewden valley around Ewden village, which are also within the civil parish. The population of the civil parish as of the 2011 census was 13,455. Until the early 18th century, what is now Stocksbridge was a deciduously wooded valley, running from Midhopestones at its northwestern extremity to Deepcar at its southeastern end. A river, originally called the Hunshelf Water and later renamed the Little Don, ran through the valley. This river was also, unofficially, called the Porter, probably on account of its peaty colour. A dirt road, connecting Sheffield with Manchester, ran through the woods adjacent to the river. There were a few stone houses in the valley and a sprinkling of farms on each hillside. In 1716 John Stocks, a local farmer and landowner, occupied a fulling mill halfway along the valley where a flood plain, created by meltwater at the end of the last ice age, extended southwest from the river. Here he reputedly built a footbridge over the river, perhaps so that his workforce could reach the mill from their homes on the north side. This originally wooden structure, Stocks' Bridge, gave the place its name, not only because it was about the only thing there apart from the mill itself, but also because as a crossing place it appeared under that name on Thomas Jeffrey's map of 1772, so establishing itself as a place name. On various occasions, this bridge was destroyed by flooding, and it was eventually replaced by a stone structure in 1812. In 1794 three businessmen, Jonathan Denton, Benjamin Grayson and Thomas Cannon, built a large cotton mill extremely close by, or possibly upon, the site of the original mill. The parish church of St Matthias was consecrated in 1890.