Trev's travails: Five Weirs to Meadowhall and back

This week Chris decided to "keep it local" and he offered us a trip out from Sheffield centre following the River Don. He led us from Victoria Quays out to Meadowhall passing Five Weirs (actually we only passed four because there was a diversion before we reached the first one). We returned along the tow-path of the Sheffield-Tinsley Canal.

The old Royal Victoria Hotel, which used to be a resting place for travellers using Sheffield Victoria station (station closed in 1960s)

The Sheffield Bailey Bridge. The Bailey Bridge was developed during World War Two by Sir Donald Bailey. You may already know that they are "instant" bridges which can be speedily built without the use of heavy machinery or cranes. Donald Bailey was born in Rotherham and trained to be a civil engineer at Sheffield University. He started work for the Ministry of Supply in 1939.

Fig trees - alas no figs, yet

Hadfield's Hecla Works are named after an Icelandic volcano - Hecla. The original offices can still be seen on New Hall Road

Sanderson's Weir dates from the 1580s. It was constructed on the orders of the Lord of the Manor - George Talbot, the 6th Earl of Shrewsbury. He was the husband of Bess of Hardwick and was also the jailer of Mary, Queen of Scots

Brightside Weir, the 4th and largest of the five weirs. This one dates from 1328 when Thomas de Furnival (he, of Furnival Gate fame) ordered it to be constructed for his corn mill. Two cutlers' wheels were added in the 15th century

After a quick tour of the facilities at Meadowhall, including the office where I worked for a year in the early 2000s, we headed back towards the city centre along the canal path.

We joined the canal by the Tinsley viaduct and were soon into a series of locks - the "Tinsley Flight"

Chris explained to us that the Sheffield and Tinsley Canal was opened in 1819 to carry boats between the navigable River Don at Tinsley and a new basin close to the heart of Sheffield. Before this date, goods had to be carried over poor roads to Tinsley Wharf on the River Don.

When it opened on 22 February 1819 a general holiday was called and crowds of spectators, reportedly 60,000, gathered to watch the first boats, a flotilla of 10 arrive from Tinsley. Within the flotilla was one barge of coal brought from Handsworth Colliery - the first cargo to travel the canal.

By 1840 the city could boast a service second to none, services to Greasbrough ran in connection with the twice weekly "fly-boat", which itself ran in connection with the Hull and London steamers. Richard Preston & Company offered a "fly-boat" service to Thorne for onward transshipment, whilst the London and Sheffield Union Company offered a service "without transshipment" to the capital. Other services ran to Gainsborough (fortnightly) and Leeds (every three weeks).

In 1895 the Sheffield Canal was amalgamated with the River Don Navigation and the Stainforth & Keadby canal to form the Sheffield and South Yorkshire Navigation. The following year the facilities at Sheffield were modernised and a new warehouse built straddling the basin.

The basin was a busy, thriving transshipment point for many years, but trade declined as more goods were moved by rail and later by road. By the 1970s, it had declined into a forlorn and unwelcoming state, with the warehouses becoming dilapidated. In the 1990s the canal basin was restored and renamed Victoria Quays.

Over lunch Martin gave us a brief insight into the history of the Tinsley Flight. He told us that there were originally twelve locks in the Flight, which rises 70 feet but in order to accommodate a new railway bridge, locks 7 and 8 were combined in 1959, with a single concrete chamber replacing both of them. The modern numbering scheme has locks 1 to 6, 7/8 and 9 to 12.

I don't think this boat is going very far!

Who would think that you could see such an picturesque view so close to a city centre?

One of the original bridges

An old warehouse on Effingham St. with the Bernard St. incinerator in the background

Chris with his "new toy"

The Old Queen's Head is a public house on Pond Hill that is the oldest domestic building in the city. This timber framed building dates from c.1475, although the earliest known written record of it is in an inventory compiled in 1582 of the estate of George Talbot, the 6th Earl of Shrewsbury. The building was then called "The hawle at the Poandes".

As a part of the Earl's estate, it may have been used as a banqueting hall for parties hunting wildfowl in the nearby ponds. These ponds, which formed in the area where the Porter Brook meets the River Sheaf, are now gone, but are commemorated in the local names Pond Street, Pond Hill (formerly Pond Well Hill) and Ponds Forge.

By the beginning of the 19th century the building was being used as a residence.

In 1840 a pub called the Old Queen's Head was opened in the neighbouring building, and sometime after 1862 the pub expanded into this building. The Queen in the pub's name is likely Mary, Queen of Scots, who was imprisoned in Sheffield from 1570 to 1584.