Parks & Pavements Past

Endcliffe Park is a well used ‘city’ park, around 2 miles from Sheffield City Centre to the south-west and situated along a part of the Porter Brook. Today it is owned by a charitable trust, with Sheffield City Council the sole trustee and a sub-committee appointed for decision making.

“how favourite a place for walking and recreation Endcliffe Woods have been for many generations” – from a local newspaper dated 31^st January 1885, in Sheffield Local Studies Library newspaper cuttings collection: 942.74SF, Vol.2, p.81.

The park was established in 1885 with the purchase of lands, later added to through donation and further purchase, so that what was publicly accessible woodland, Endcliffe Woods, would remain so in perpetuity. There’s another part of this park’s origin story, about the need for a new sewer to sort out waste water from Fulwood, which we will write about in another post.

The park was known as Endcliffe Woods Park until the mid-20th century, when the name changed to Endcliffe Park, with some local objection (see letters section of the Sheffield Telegraph, 11th July 1947). Today it includes formal paths and flower beds, matured trees and planting, the surviving woodland, a playing field and playground, café, stepping stones and two ponds inhabited by waterfowl such as mallard and mandarin ducks, moorhen, coots, black-headed gulls and the occasional heron or kingfisher. There is also an underused Arts & Crafts style Pavilion which may soon be converted to a new restaurant, and several monuments of different scales, commemorating Queen Victoria, the 10 airmen of the Second World War aircraft ‘Mi Amigo’ and many local people.

Previous features now lost include a Victorian drinking fountain, which was situated near the Hunter’s Bar entrance, several ornamental bridges lost as the footpaths have been rearranged, a bandstand (demolished around 1957/8), and the former Endcliffe Dam, a millpond now filled in.

Endcliffe is my local park, so was an obvious choice for my first research subject as part of the ‘Parks Past’ trail project I am undertaking. It’s been great to look at the park through an historical lens and to learn so many interesting things about it. For me, highlights have included understanding more of the symbolism included on the various Victorian monuments, undertaking a ‘drainspotting’ exercise (see this great Sheffield based website on the subject), reading the moving story of the Mi Amigo crew, and more besides!

Endcliffe Park: A timeline of acquisition

1885, October 15th: 21 acres purchased for £5235, plus a further ~£2000 spent on laying out the grounds

1887: 9 acres, forming the playing fields, purchased to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, costing £5045

1927, September 23rd: Extension of 5 1/2 acres presented to the city by Lieutenant Colonel H K Stephenson; this is the land to the north of the former Holme wheel

1956: Park land lost due to the construction of the Hunter’s Bar roundabout

Note: this is the first blog post in a series on the history of Endcliffe Park, Sheffield.