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The Villages of Bramley and Ravenfield
By Stu Charmak
 The village of Bramley has gained a certain notoriety over the past few months. This is because of the publication of Julian Baggini's book 'Welcome to Everytown', which was reviewed in a previous issue of this magazine. The author was looking for "somewhere that contained all types of the English." He found that typical English area in the S66 postcode and set up home for six months in Flash Lane, Bramley. He observed that Bramley "is two places in one", divided between those who have lived there all their lives and the newcomers who are populating the "relentless developments" in the area.
Round the corner from where Julian lived, on Progress Drive, one of those developments is moving forward. Had he come here a few years ago he would have seen green fields at the back of the large Northern Dairies building. That is all gone now, making way for accomodation for those who find it handy to have a motorway almost at the bottom of their drive.
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 Bramley has ancient origins, being recorded in the 1086 Domesday Book as Bramelei, meaning a woodland where broom grows. Broom is a shrub sporting golden-yellow flowers in the spring and summer and is useful in reclaiming land spoiled by fire or laid waste. By the mid-1850s the village only had 385 inhabitants, but the most recent census records over 8,000 residents. Julian's observation about "two places" extends to Bramley geographically too. It is cut in half by the Bawtry Road dual carriageway. Entering from the M18 roundabout, on the left the first impressive building is the Sir Jack public house, named after the late Sir Jack Layden, a former leader of Rotherham Council. Behind that is a hotel and a keep-fit suite, but dominating the hill is the Morrisons supermarket. Garages and new small businesses lie opposite and that area seems full of youth, vigour and brashness.
 Turning right at the traffic lights into the village proper reveals another side of Bramley, a perhaps quieter side, a traditional village with roots, but which still takes sidelong glances at the future. The Olde King Henry pub (the Ball Inn in a previous incarnation) stands on the corner, which has undergone a major facelift and refurbishment. Opposite and down to the mini-roundabout there is a real variety of shops, from hairdressers, bakers and clothes shops, through takeaways and gift shops, to pet grooming, hunting and fishing and a Spar general store.
On Main Street, as a complement to and competition for the Olde King Henry, there is the Master Brewer. This is situated by a pelican crossing installed when the local council brought in a one-way system. This action has raised numerous objections from Bramley people, citing the system as contributing to the ruin of businesses as well as the loss of parking places. What is obvious is that the pelican crossing itself is an anachronism as it has been placed where the road is so narrow it takes scarcely more than one stride to cross it.
 Clearly though, despite its problems, Bramley is developing, evidenced by the building which has sprung up on Cross Street. Its spanking new look is slightly incongruous among the older structures, but looking again, it is apparent that Bramley contains a profusion of buildings from differemt eras, stone-built, brick-built and wooden, which all add to the character of a thriving community.
In amongst all these and outside the Bramley Social Club, a centre of village life, is a salute to history. The Memorial Garden is well looked after and offers benches to sit and contemplate both past and present. The plaques to the dead of the two World Wars are clean and bright. Interestingly, they record 17 names from World War Two, but 47 names from World War One, illustrating what is often said, that the flower of English manhood was heavily sacrificed on the fields of France.
Bramley has its own park. The entrance hides at the top of Church Street behind sandstone walls. Once inside the open expanse of greenery is truly welcoming. This is a quiet space of lush grass and old trees which give shade in the summer and shelter in the winter. It is perfect for a gentle walk, with or without a dog, a game of footie or just a kick up of the autumn leaves.
 On the left at the bottom of Church Street a house stands back off the road. This was built as a Methodist Chapel in 1785 and a year later the itinerant evangelist John Wesley preached here. Although he travelled far and wide, to places as distant as London and Savannah, Georgia, Wesley was born and bred in Epworth, the village between Doncaster and Scunthorpe.
Further along Main Street are two hotels of a very good standard which service the local area. Stonecroft House is a 17th Century Grade 2 listed building which has 4 AA stars to its credit and?a colourful, eye-catching cockerell on its roof as a weathervane. Across the road the Elton Hotel only became a hostelry in the 1960s. Built in the 1800s it was originally owned by a leather tanner. One hundred years later it was bought by the Keary family who, although it is now part of a hotel chain, still retain some interest in it.
On the way out of the village the road passes near to Bramley Grange Farm which goes back to the 1600s. It was designated a fish farm for the monks at nearby Roche Abbey and was part of a pre-nuptial agreement (there is nothing new under the sun) in 1701.
Moor Lane South climbs upward as it wanders north towards Ravenfield Common which is about 400 feet above sea level. (Common land in England and Wales does not mean it is not owned, but that people other than the landowner have some rights over it.) This is where all Ravenfield's shops and businesses are situated. The houses around the crossroads were mostly built in the 1800s like Bramley, but also like its neighbouring village, there are a number of new housing developments, on both sides of Braithwell Road. Shops and business cluster in a building at the end of that road.
 On the opposite corner stands the Cavalier public house and the post office. The original Ravenfield post office was down the road in Old Ravenfield and was inside a pub known as the Longbar, or by some of its regulars, Ravenfield Jack's. This was after its owner Jack Sanderson. As the Common developed, the Longbar migrated to the crossroads and took the post ofice with it. The move somehow got missed by the GPO; their records still having the post office at its first site. Consequently, when postcodes were introduced the one that the post office received is out of sequence with the surrounding area.
Halfway between the Common and the old village, along Moor Lane North, lies the primary school. Built in 1910, now also with new additions, it replaced the old school which was getting on for a century in age. The present school continues its close connection with the village through an on-going joint cataloguing of flora and fauna, particularly butterflies, which have been seen in the vicinity. Signs have been put up in fields and on fences with relevant information which provide interest for the visitor and a lively natural history education for the children.
The name Ravenfield is believed to have been bestowed by the Danes in the 9th Century, although an unnamed hamlet may have already existed. There is disagreement over the meaning of the name, but it boils down to either a field of ravens, or Hrafn's (Norse for raven) field after the Viking who took possession of it. Whenever it was founded the village's existence can be put down to the spring close by which was its main water supply.
After the Norman Conquest it was given, among other lands,?to WIlliam de Warenne, a son-in-law of William the Conqueror. By the 1500s the Westby family were lords of the manor and they established Ravenfield Hall and Ravenfield Park, which was a?deer park, where roe deer roamed. By the early 1700s the Westby family fortunes had diminished and Ravenfield was sold to Mrs. Elizabeth Parkin. We shall hear more of her later.
By the early 1800s Thomas Bosvile was the estate's owner, his name commemorated by Bosvile Street in Herringthorpe. In 1907 a new railway line was constructed to run from Silverwood Colliery to Dinnington. It was run by the L & NE and LM & S Joint Railway. Nothing is left of the line now but on the narrow road on the way out to Ravenfield Park there are two brick 'walls' on either side of the road which were the?abutments for a bridge over which that railway travelled.
If you can negotiate this narrow road, without having to reverse back to let another vehicle pass, it leads to the Park entrance. A local decision in 1873 to flood the Park was defeated in Parliament and the proposed reservoir placed at what is now Thrybergh Country Park. The Hall and the Park were commandeered from Phoenix Sports and Social Club, who had bought the estate in the 1920s, and it became PoW Camp 296 during World War Two for both German and Italian prisoners. The Hall was eventually demolished but since the 1980s much improvement?work has been done in the Park by the Phoenix and Parkgate Angling Club. There is now excellent fishing available in the ponds; membership is open to the public, and the Park is teeming with diverse flora and fauna. There are a few roe deer around, and also on offer are green grasshoppers, heron, kingfishers, woodpeckers and even adders breed here. These snakes are poisonous but, fortunately, are also extremely shy!
Mrs. Elizabeth Parkin, referred to earlier, was the rich owner of the estate in the 1700s and she was the Queen of the Sheffield social set. In 1756 she persuaded Yorkshire architect John Carr to design and rebuild St. James' church, complete with a monument to herself inside! It is only one of three churches which he designed. Unlike most village churches St. James' is not in the heart of the community but off to one side, up a very narrow lane. It stands in quiet solitude with its unique clock on the tower which houses six bells, none of which are now ringable. The clock has only an hour hand because workers on the estate, when they looked up, did not need to know the time to the minute, so a minute hand was deemed redundant.
Around the sides of the church is a superbly kept cemetery. The oldest tombstone I found was from 1773 and the newest only last year. Standing in the corner of that English field brought those famous lines of Rupert Brooke's 1914 poem to mind: "there's some corner of a foreign field, That is forever England" came to mind. To compound this, as I stood there, a propellor-driven plane flew overhead evoking memories of old World War Two films where the fields and gardens of England are bathed in soft sunshine as brave men go off to defend the islands.
Fresh flowers adorn certain graves and Ravenfield in the 21st Century has earned a reputation for such. It received placings in the 2002 Yorkshire in Bloom competition and a Silver Award in the 2003 RHS Britain in Bloom competition. Its crowning glory so far is as the Winner in the Small Village Category of Yorkshire in Bloom 2007, and deservedly so.
Published Winter 2007. All information correct at time of print.
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