Sunday at Bill's Mother's: 8th September 2024
Seeking out the hidden River Don. Arrival of the spiral canal boat in Tinsley Locks. And the River Sheaf welcomes its 10,000th modern explorer today.
Morning. (And sorry we’re a bit late). A watery edition today, with an exploration of the secret riverside walk mentioned last week, along with news about underground Sheffield and the arrival of the huge spiral canal boat at Tinsley Lock by artist Alex Chinneck.
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Loop On The Canal
The latest spectacular Tinsley sculpture by artist Alex Chinneck has arrived at Tinsley Locks this weekend. (Sorry, I’ve not had chance to get out to see it yet, so hopefully the artist’s impression above, from the Canal & Rivers Trust press info earlier this year, will give you an impression).
The sculpture was commissioned by Sheffield Council and funded by British Land (former owners of Meadowhall) and energy company E.ON, who run the Blackburn Meadows biomass power site.
Earlier sculptures by Alex Chinneck included a knotted post box by Tinsley Meadows primary school, and an inverted car on a Tinsley back street. He says the 20 foot high canal sculpture has been one of his most complex to make and site, and had to be brought in by boat along the canal, to a location on Tinsley Locks that required surveying for unexploded wartime bombs.
Titled The Looping Boat, the steel sculpture carries the name of the first boat to navigate the Sheffield and Tinsley Canal after opening over 200 years ago, in 1819: ‘The Industry’ .
The sculpture is set in the canal north of Tinsley Marina, between locks four and five, at: What3Words location events.dining.plays
Quiet Flows The Don
I was once told that the Don east of Owlerton was like parts of the River Derwent in Derbyshire. So a few years ago I clambered over a wall off Club Mill Road to see for myself. The answer was that the Don here was trying hard to be a wide Pennine foothills flood plain river, darkened by a wild urban woodland, with water birds and returning fish, but was inevitably pockmarked by shopping trolleys and plastic carrier bags and machine parts from the showrooms and works off Penistone Road.
Standing on the bank, and blanking out any floating debris that passed by, you really could imagine you were in a Park District river valley.
Last week I learned from the Upper Don Trail Trust that a section of this riverbank is likely to be become a key part of the new Great British Energy power network, a storage facility (a big battery, I hear) for the country’s renewable energy system to be built on the old Club Mill Road power station land.
The Trust and their supporters are pushing the developers to solve the problem of Club Mill Road’s transfer from a village of traveller’s vans and caravans to a wonderful walking, wheeling and cycling route between Kelham, Neepsend and Hillsborough, and also to sort out a spectacular old riverside path winding through to Hillsborough College and Wardsend.
Howard Bayley from the Friends of Wardsend Cemetery has come with me to explore this hidden pathway. From the cemetery, you take the trail along what should be (according to the council’s plans of some years ago) a riverside route and missing stretch of the Upper Don Trail between the Club Mill Road industrial estate and Wardsend Cemetery.
The residents of the 500 metre long traveller’s village are friendly and if they have dogs, generally hold onto them as you pass, says Howard, but the current route as it is does not really encourage casual walkers, he observes. And given the land was underwater in the floods of 2007 it’s dangerous to live there. He says the travellers are keen to move on, when a new home can be found.
The village appears to be slowly shrinking, and at the southern end, access to the riverside path we’re exploring today is a little easier than it was a year ago.
We find tall stands of teasels and willowherb, and down below us the river riffles past a broken weir. A mallard duck swims up and a lost football floats down, there are dragonflies, and some painted stone stumps that were once a crucial part of the old power station, now being drawn back into the land by riverside bushes.
On a metal graffitied bridge over the river are two workers from Club Mill Road who say they come here most lunchtimes to relax between shifts. We chat and watch the dragonflies below.
Over the bridge a path through a woodland of pioneer trees soon brings you to a tall fence and Sheffield College. What a great route for students and staff from Shirecliffe and Kelham, says Howard, avoiding the dirt and stress of Penistone Road?
He tells me the Friends of Wardsend Cemetery support the Upper Don Trail Trust ‘objections’ to the proposal for the renewable power application, simply because they want the plans to also include improvements to the riverside paths and the Upper Don Trail route that he says local groups have been seeking for eleven years.
The local Friends groups and Upper Don Trail Trust like the new power system idea, but for a very small investment, the plans could also make the whole area better for people and wildlife, Howard says.
And further up the river, by Wardsend Cemetery, Howard tells me the Friends are in discussion about another piece of land owned by our national energy suppliers, where he and colleagues would like to see a small classroom and education centre (and crucially, toilets) for the schools who visit the cemetery for lessons on local wildlife and history. Maybe even a cafe too, he says, ambitiously.
Howard says he hopes the council will support all these plans: the whole site, below the city’s new Country Park where big investments are already taking place at Parkwood Springs, could provide so many health, mental health and travel benefits to a less wealthy side of the city, he says, as well as helping bring the river back to the people it once served just as a power source and dumping ground.
From the bridge to the college, we find a short path through the brambles to a rocky beach, where a peaceful rural view is framed by Steel City architecture, with old works walls crumbling around invading Japanese Knotweed and trees born early in the last century. A Dipper flies out and away to a quieter spot upriver.
We try and find the walls of the old power station building, which is still here, according to Howard and Google Maps, but currently covered over by bracken and brambles.
And then we’re back on Club Mill Lane, where the workers on the bridge tell us work will be carried out soon to repair another part of the roadside, eroded away by a river that’s maybe trying to tell us something.
10,000 Eager Seekers Under the Sheaf
Well, their wellington boots are under the Sheaf, if not the explorers themselves, but I wanted an epic Jules Verne kind of headline.
The river tours under the station and the roads of inner city Sheffield launched before Covid, and have become a hot ticket item for local history and wildlife lovers, and edgy tourists.
People travel to Sheffield from London and the South Coast to take a 90 minute walking tour along a river that was once so foul with sewage, dead animals and industrial effluent that the city authorities welcomed the proposal in the late 1800s from the mighty Midland Railways company to box off the Sheaf in a series of hidden conduits and tunnels under the growing city.
If the weather holds today, the Sheaf and Porter Rivers Trust (who organise the fundraising tours, at £25 a ticket) tell me they will see their 10,000th underground tourist exploring those tunnels to see stunning Victorian architecture and glimpse signs of some of the wildlife that’s moved in there: shrimps, fish, enterprising water plants, bats and even the recent signs of otters.
The ‘Hidden Rivers’ tours continue through September.
What’s On Out There (from Sunday 8th September)
A tiny selection from our regularly updated What’s On Out There in September news and listings post.
Sun 8th - Diverse Habitats Walk at Sheffield General Cemetery
Sun 8th - Wadsley Commoners muck in morning
Mon 9th - Fri 13th Sept - Daily health walks in parks and green spaces from Step Out Sheffield, 10 am start
Mon 9th - Packhorse Heritage of Sheffield - talk at Wadsley Church Hall (£4)
Tues 10th - CPREPDSY Ethel Haythornthwaite Walk (SWF)
Weds 11th - History of Ecclesall Woods Walk (SWF)
Thurs 12th - CPREPDSY Four Ethels from Hathersage Walk (SWF)
Thurs 12th - Sheff Walk Fest: Evening Deer Park walk around Parkwood Springs
Fri 13th - Walk the Ethels (from Fairholmes - £7.50)
Sat 14th - Meersbrook Walled Garden Tomato Fest
Sat 14th / Sun 15th - Castlegate Festival
Sun 15th - Liz Hanks ‘Land’ - A Musical Audio Walk (SWF)
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Great article, really informative. However, how come the council has money to spend on commissioning 'loopy' artworks but not for maintaining 'decaying' signage? Do SCC just dish out these commissions to favoured artists or are they put out to tender??