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Visit Honest Dodworth
By Brian Elliott
 Dodworth in early June, waiting for the early morning mist to clear on probably the warmest day of the year so far.
From the construction of the M1 motorway to the new £6m bypass and Capital Park, Dodworth has changed a great deal over the last 50 years. It’s hard to think of the place as a village, more like a small town according to local resident Horace Price, an old Dodworther and former miner who lives in Silver Street (anyone remember Hufton’s shop).
Dodworth became an Urban District Council in the 1890s. The original council office building is still on High Street. Unfortunately the Mechanics’ Institute & Working Men’s Club which played an important role in Dodworth life for several generations was demolished in the early 1990s.
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 Someone once told me that when pubs close places lose some of their soul. I’m not sure if I would entirely agree, but it was sad to see The Pheasant boarded up. The Miners’ Arms is now a Kindergarten and the Horse and Jockey an Indian restaurant. On High Street there are two former hostelries: The Rising Sun Inn and Smith’s Arms and there are other lost, long-forgotten inns, too: The Alma, The Fountain, Mason’s Arms and Wellington Inn. The Thornley Arms (named after the local landowners), Station Inn (formerly the Rose & Thistle), Travellers’ Inn and Gate Inn survive.
I’m fond of Dodworth. My paternal grandparents, newly married, lived at Guelder Row, off Keresforth Road in the early part of last century. The terraced properties near New Street are no longer there but I have an old photograph of my grandfather as a young man when he played for the village football team. He was a coalminer. The main local pit was then owned by the Old Silkstone Colliery Company (Dodworth/Church Lane Colliery after nationalization) off Station Road, though Rose Hill Colliery was the nearest for him to walk to, just down Keresforth Road.
I started my visit at the new roundabout where a tall piece of modern artwork is a central feature, and looked across to the developing Capital Park area. A notice, nearby, refers to an impending development: a Ramada Hotel. Then on more familiar territory, along Barnsley Road, passing the Gate Inn (gate is an old word meaning road) and and stopping for a few minutes at the Brooklands Hotel complex (www.brooklandshotel) and Bannatyne Health Club (www.bannatyne.co.uk). It’s amazing how this site has developed from its modest beginnings with the Gratton family. Some of our readers may remember the original restaurant, and perhaps eating a Barnsley Chop.
 I parked at the new Co-op store, near the crossroads and, surprisingly, found myself admiring the railings which include stainless steel bees, an imaginative piece of artwork: bees, flowers and honey representing the community working together, the Co-op logo. This busy corner once accommodated a couple of wooden shops. One was a barber’s where I often went to have my hair cut. Was it Ronnie Turton’s? Round the corner, on High Street, a small queue had already formed outside David Bell’s barber’s shop, housed in one of the oldest properties, with a ‘1641’ date inscribed in stone on a massive lintel. Part of the Old Hall of the ‘town street’, it was associated with a well known local family, the Brookes. John Charles Brooke, born at Field Head in 1748, was interested in what we now call genealogy or family history, drawing up pedigrees or family trees of local worthies. His abilities became so advanced that he was elected as a member of the Society of Antiquaries, rising to prominence when appointed to the dizzy height of Somerset Herald, responsible for a variety of armourial matters nationwide. Brooke was compiling a new preface and guide to the Domesday Book prior to his sudden death, in 1794. The Brookes were yeoman farmers and tanners. The tanning of leather involved soaking hides in a series of pits containing liquor from oak bark, obtained from local woodland. It was an important activity in the Dodworth/ Silkstone/Cawthorne area during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, tanners making a good living. One remarkable local tanner, John Hobson, who lived at Dodworth Green, kept a fascinating diary, featured in my book The Making of Barnsley. Tanyard Farm, just below St John’s church, is a surviving place-name from this time. This little area in the shadow of the Anglican church also once housed a small, thriving weaving community; and there were similar communities on High Street.
 At the crossroads I paused at the war memorial, one of the best examples in our area. A great crowd attended the unveiling ceremony in 1923. Sadly, ‘The Soldier’ has lost his bayonet. Walking towards Dodworth Green, I noticed the old stone-built Wesleyan/Council school of 1873 and adjacent Methodist church, erected in 1902, both replacing earlier structures. Occupying a bend of the road, the pleasing facade of the Travellers’ Inn is then in full view, with a datestone of ‘1782’. Green Road was on the Saltersbrook turnpike, an ancient routeway which passed through moorland to Cheshire and Lancashire, so the inn was well sited for refreshment, stabling and accommodation. The name Salter’s Croft on a property near the top of High Street is from an old field of that name, a reminder of the packhorse trains that stopped to graze here. An infamous murder took place outside the Travellers’ Inn in 1886 when a poacher, James Murphy murdered Police Constable Austwick. Murphy was hanged at York.
 St John the Baptist’s church stands well, on a slight hill overlooking the road. Dodworth parish was created in the 1840s to serve the growing population of weaving and coalmining families, who would have otherwise been dependent on Silkstone. Sir Nicholas Pevsner described the church’s large pinnacles as ‘monstrous’ but maybe the architect, B. Taylor, had the the gritty and hardworking local inhabitants in mind. I also spotted the datestone from the old town school of 1853 in a garden nearby and a new housing development (Circa) opposite.
Walking further along the road, I could just see The Grange, an interesting Georgian property associated with Revd Thornley Taylor in Edwardian times and later the Wood family. A little further, on the opposite side of the road is the former lodge of Dodworth Hall. Described as ‘vacant’ in Edwardian directories, the Hall, now long demolished, was the ‘big house’ of the village, the principal seat of the Thornley-Taylors and Asquith families; and therefore the focus of many social activities. The Home Farm and much of the Hall’s parkland survive.
 Rather than retracing my footsteps, I walked along the public footpath by the site of the old Hall, leading me towards Dodworth Bottom. By now it was sunny and very warm. Its a pleasant short walk, with lovely views in all directions. On the path, just ten yards in front of me, a hare sat, its long upright ears twitching for a few moments in the pleasant breeze. It soon disappeared into a field of oil seed rape but a few yards further on, to my left in a field of barley I could hear an occasional thumping sound, perhaps another hare, asserting its territory. An excellent book, The Leaping Hare, by George Ewart Evans and David Thomson explores facts and folklore associated with hares. It’s well worth tracking down.
 A little further on I heard another, sort of munching sound. In a field of Saville Hall Farm, close to the hedge was a bull, its front legs kneeling to allow comfortable access to the lush grass. I then walked through well kept allotments towards the public recreation area in front of the Noah’s Ark Kindergarten, listening as I walked to the sound of a cockerel and what appeared to be very content free-range hens. Then a short diversion along part of Saville Hall Lane. Back in the mid-1970s I visited the Hall when Mr Danforth lived there. There are some interesting seventeenth century features on a medieval site. The Hall was occupied by a Mr Fenton, the agent for the Earl of Strafford in the 1720s. Benjamin Peckett farmed here in 1901. Walter Wood who succeeded Pecket shortly afterwards was still farming here in the mid-1930s.
Walking up Stainborough Road to its junction with Keresforth Road there are a number of interesting groups of nineteenth century stone cottages, Oldroyd’s Row and Holroyd’s Yard capturing my attention, providing glimpses of old Dodworth.
 High Street was quite busy with shoppers and there were a few young men enjoying a drink in the sun outside the Thornley Arms. After another diversion, towards Keresforth, and then along Station Road, I finished my visit back at the Co-op. On the way I could not help recalling the occasions in the early 1970s when I looked and photographed some of the old properties at the top of the street, by Harold Payne’s shoe shop. There was quite a lot of timber-framing still visible and even the isolated remains of a magnificent cruck frame. Perhaps some people will remember it.
But why Honest Dodworth? Well, it’s a tale about an old miner who came out of one of the pubs rather worse for wear and climbed a lamp-post, leaving his gold watch at the top. Of course, when he returned the next morning it was still there. What a great story for a place that has so many great traditions including brass bands, and a male voice choir.
Published Summer 2007. All information correct at time of print
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