The Little Shop at Hunshelf Bottom
The history of what is now Samuel's Kitchen
August 2024 was the 21st anniversary of Tracey Martin’s ownership of the café at Hunshelf Bottom now known as Samuel’s Kitchen, situated at no. 2 Hunshelf Road. Tracey bought the building in 2003 from Corus, who were the owners of the steelworks at that time. People might remember this building being known as Loz’s Lunchbox, Hanwell’s and Rusby’s.
Finding out the history of the building was challenging because the deeds have been lost, and there are no copies lodged with the Deeds Registry at Wakefield. However, the story of the building gradually unfolded with the use of other records and although there are some things I haven’t been able to find out, here are the results …
Today the building is used solely as a shop and café, but it was originally built as four separate flats, or “cottages,” by William Newton of Berton-under-Edge Farm. The building was known as Bank Bottom Cottages and also as Newton Cottages. Without the deeds, it is hard to pinpoint exactly when the building was erected. It does not appear on an Ordnance Survey map published in 1854. Nigel Hanwell, whose family rented the shop from the steelworks from the 1950s, once enquired at the Works about the date it was built when he was doing a school project, and was told it dated back to around 1860-1870. There are a couple of photographs of this area dated 1860 which just miss capturing the bottom of Hunshelf Road, but the building does appear on an old photograph dated 1868. Unfortunately, only its roof can be seen, so it is impossible to tell whether the lean-to shop was also in existence at that time.
The four separate dwellings eventually became numbers 2, 4, 6 and 8 Hunshelf Road. Nigel Hanwell remembers the layout from before the four were converted into one dwelling. The two bottom flats were nos. 2 and 4 and were “1 up /1 down” with a stone staircase connecting the two floors. There might have been a dark, damp cellar-type room at the back, but without any natural light and not fit for habitation. There was no separate kitchen, but a Yorkshire Range was installed on the party wall which would have done for heating water, cooking, and providing warmth. The upstairs flats, nos. 6 and 8, were larger, with two rooms plus an attic bedroom and these were accessed by staircases at the back of the building. All the houses at Hunshelf Bottom and Hunshelf Park above were re-numbered in about 1953 and when these four flats were converted into one house it became no. 2 Hunshelf Road.
The lean-to shop abutted the end of a row of three terraced houses on Ford Lane. An Ordnance Survey map of 1893 clearly shows the lean-to extension at the front right of the building. I have been unable to find out when these three houses were built, but they appear on the 1868 photograph and, along with Corn Mill Row, were some of the first terraced houses on Ford Lane, pre-dating Bath Terrace which was a bit further east. They were possibly known as Peace Row originally.
William Newton was a farmer who lived at the top of Hunshelf Bank at Berton-under-Edge Farm. The farm was a large one, with stabling for six horses, and in 1862 William was granted permission to open a public house on the premises. According to the late Hunshelf historian Ted Spencer, William began building a new public house further down the hill in 1864 which would become the Rising Sun, but as both the Rising Sun and its attached cottage are shown on a photograph dated 1860, this date is wrong. At some time between 1860 and 1868 Prospect Cottages were built next to the Rising Sun Cottage (there were originally two cottages, then three, and a fourth was added in about 1920). William built Bank Bottom Cottages at around the same time. He did not become the landlord of the pub though, because he died at the relatively young age of 42, on 25 September 1864. It was his widow Martha who ran the new pub, which was up and running by May 1865.
In his will of 1864, dated the day before he died, William Newton left to his widow Martha “all those four freehold cottages lately erected by me and situate at Stocksbridge … with the outbuildings, vacant grounds and appurtenances … two of the same being now or late in the occupation of John Milnes and the remaining two in the respective occupations of Thomas Marsden and … [blank] Patterson …” Martha was to have the rent from these cottages as an income. She died on 30 January 1910 at the age of 88, and in her Will she referenced the “four cottages situate in Hunshelf, the rents of which I enjoy under the provisions of the Will of my late husband William Newton and of which I am the sole surviving trustee.” She directed her grandsons Harry William Newton and Frederick William Thompson to sell these cottages and divide the proceeds among her surviving children, although Harry had died by the time the Will was proved. The local newspaper reported that Mrs. Newton was the oldest inhabitant in the Stocksbridge district, and had lived to see her fifth generation. “She was ever ready to tell of the old days, and the development of the country from her youth.”
John Milnes was a grocer and draper, and a witness to the Will of 1864 in which William Newton left Bank Bottom Cottages to his widow. John rented two of these from Mr. Newton including the shop, the other two being rented out to Thomas Marsden, a labourer, and Isaac Patterson, a wire drawer. By 1870 John had moved out and bought his own place, a large house and shop, and he ran his business there until his death in 1882. I have read that in 1881 John Milnes had his grocer and draper’s shop in the lean-to at Bank Bottom, but this cannot be the case because he had only rented this shop. John made his Will in 1870 and in it he mentions his house and shop, so we know he owned them; they were sold in 1893. Bank Bottom Cottages were in the ownership of the Newtons until 1912, and the description of the sales advert for Milnes’s shop does not match anything about the Bank Bottom property. I have been unable to pinpoint the exact location of John’s shop – there will be an article to follow about this soon – but it was very close to Fox’s gates and quite a substantial building – I am beginning to wonder if it was Bank House. John’s property, which was leasehold, was bought by Fox’s, the owners of the land.
It is very difficult to pinpoint Bank Bottom Cottages and the nearby houses using the old census returns. The census was only taken once every ten years, and it was quite rare to find the same people in the same house ten years apart. The census enumerators could be frustratingly inconsistent with the route they took and the names they gave streets and rows of houses, often recording them using unofficial names. For example, Vaughton Hill at Deepcar was so called because of the Vaughton family who lived there, with the row of houses which included the Travellers Rest public house being known as Vaughton Row. Except for when the landlord of the pub was called Makin, when the row was recorded on the census as Makin Row.
It does seem that Bank Bottom Cottages appear on the 1861 census, although they are not named, because Thomas Marsden, Isaac Patterson and John Milnes appear as consecutive entries. They were recorded as being at “Hunshelf Bottom.”
John Milnes had moved out by the time the 1871 census was taken. My best guess in identifying the building is that three houses which were recorded at “Stocks Bridge, township of Hunshelf” were Bank Bottom Cottages. The heads of these households were Joseph Newton, a butcher, Charles Simpson, a quarry labourer, and Samuel Firth junior, a labourer in the steelworks. Joseph Newton was born in 1849 and was the son of William and Martha Newton of Berton-under-Edge. He had married Lydia Cartwright in 1849, and they appear on this census with a son, Harry. Joseph went on to be the landlord of the Rising Sun. His brother William Newton was a butcher here when the 1881 census was taken, the houses being recorded as Newton’s Cottages. Because only three households were recorded here (and no cottage was recorded as unoccupied), it seems likely that Joseph Newton occupied two of the cottages and the shop, as had John Milnes before him. The other heads of household in 1881 were John Spivey, a labourer; Mary Knutton, a widow; and Edward Sykes, labourer.
I cannot work out which was Bank Bottom Cottages on the 1891 census. Could it be that both Bank Bottom Cottages and the three adjoining houses had been missed off in error?
The 1901 census records four households at “Hunshelf Bottom” which are probably Bank Bottom Cottages; William Reaney, a labourer (who was definitely living at Bank Bottom Cottages when the 1911 census was taken and when the building was sold in 1912), Ernest Fox, Ernest Robinson and Ezra Shaw, all steelworkers.
In 1911 the four flats were recorded as Hunshelf Bottom or Newton Cottages, each householder choosing how to record his address, and the heads of household were Thomas Ollerenshaw, Percy Wade, Harry Weston Crawshaw and William Reaney. They all worked in the steelworks apart from Harry Weston, my great uncle, who was a miner.
On 29 August 1912, after the deaths of Martha Newton and her son Joseph, the building went to auction to close the Trust set up by William Newton in 1864. The property went to auction at the Royal Oak public house at Deepcar, and was described as, “four freehold stone-built cottages called Bank Bottom Cottages, situate near the Works of Samuel Fox and Co., Ltd., in Stocksbridge. Tenants: Messrs. Reany, Crawshaw, Ollerenshaw and Wade. Annual rent £36 8s. 0d. (the tenants paying the Poor Rate). Also the building adjoining, formerly used as a Butcher’s Shop, and afterwards as a Baker’s Shop, but now unoccupied, together with the Vacant Land adjoining. The Cottages always command good tenants.” Interested parties could apply to Mr. Gunby Howarth, a butcher, who lived at Hope Terrace, Stocksbridge, one of the executors of Joseph Newton’s will. A report of the sale in the local newspapers informed people that the cottages, also known as Newton Cottages, were bought by “Mr. L. Rusby” for £370, which the Bank of England’s Inflation Calculator estimates to equate to about £35,500 today. This would be Leonard Rusby.
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THE RUSBYS
According to the 1912 sales advert, the lean-to shop had been used as both a butchers and a bakers shop. The butchers were the Newton family, but I have been unable to find out who the bakers were. Leonard Rusby bought the shop and opened it as a tobacconist and grocery shop.
Leonard had been born at Green Moor in 1868 at a pub called The Friendship Inn which his grandmother Ann Rusby had run. The 1871 census records him there, aged 2, with his parents William Rusby and Mary (nee Birkinshaw) and his grandmother, who was recorded as a “beer house keeper.” William and Mary took over the Friendship after the death of Ann. As far as I know, this pub was where Pond Cottage is at Green Moor, on Well Hill Road. William went on to be the landlord of The Rock Inn, also at Green Moor.
Leonard originally worked in the quarries at Green Moor. He married Amy Pickford in 1893 and in 1901 they were living at Trunce Farm, Green Moor. In 1911 they were at Old Mill, Huthwaite Bank in Thurgoland. They had four daughters, but only two survived to adulthood. Annie died as a baby and Hannah died in 1915 aged 12. The two surviving sisters, Mary and Alice, worked in the shop and ran it together for many years after their father’s death. Mary was born in 1894, and Alice in 1899.
Leonard Rusby had been recorded in the Electoral Registers at Huthwaite Bank as being entitled to vote as an “occupational voter,” occupation here meaning a house rather than a job. The vote did not yet extend to all men and the qualification here was to be an occupier of a house or land on which rent was paid of at least £10 per annum. In the 1914 Electoral Register Leonard was now entitled to vote as an “Ownership Elector,” the entry telling us that Leonard Rusby of Bank Bottom, Stocksbridge, was entitled to vote because of his ownership of “Four Freehold Cottages at Bank Bottom.”
Leonard and Amy’s daughter Mary married Tyson Birkhead in 1919 and for a while they lived with Tyson’s parents John Birkhead and Clara Chadwick, who rented a house at Brownhill Row, Hunshelf Bank, and who were staunch supporters of the Co-operative movement. When Mrs. Birkhead moved into her husband’s home after their marriage in 1889 she found out that the owners of the 16 houses at Brownhill Row ran a store in Hunshelf Bank. This would be the Brownhills and the Hortons, who owned Hunshelf House (formerly the Butchers Arms), half way down the hill between Brownhill Row and Brick Lump. Apparently the owners brought pressure upon their tenants to trade with them. Mrs. Birkhead, however, broke away and joined the local Co-operative society instead. I wonder if she ever patronised the little shop at Hunshelf Bottom?
When the 1921 census was taken, Leonard, Amy and Mary were on holiday in Blackpool, and Alice was minding the shop. Tyson doesn’t appear to have been recorded for some reason. The occupants of the other three dwellings were William Horace Smith and his wife Rose, Arnold Bradwell and his family, and Harry Weston Crawshaw and family. Harry Weston had been away fighting in France in the Great War. He returned home, but his younger brother Winfield did not.
In around 1924 Leonard, Amy and Alice moved to Haywood Lane, Deepcar, and Mary and Tyson moved into the house behind the shop.
Leonard died in 1932; the local newspaper reported that he had seemed in his usual good health but died suddenly in his garden. He was 64 years old, and the paper said that he was a well-known tradesman who had formerly had a business in Ford Lane. Amy died in 1948 at the age of 83. In his Will, which he had written in 1913, Leonard left all his real and personal estate to his widow. After her death all his furniture, effects and real estate were to be sold, and the money divided equally between his children.
Alice continued to live at Haywood Lane after the death of her parents – later electoral registers give the number as 52 – and she continued working in the shop alongside her sister Mary. In 1947 Mary and Tyson moved to no. 64 Haywood Lane. Mary would have been 54 years old and Tyson 55, so they weren’t of retirement age; perhaps they just wanted a larger house. Janet Sanderson, who had been born at the house adjoining Rusby’s shop, remembers that Alice’s house was at the bottom of Mary and Tyson’s garden. She remembers the two ladies fondly, and called them both “auntie.” In 1948 Tyson bought another house, at 281 Hunshelf Park (which became number 2 in 1953 and not to be confused with 2 Hunshelf Road, the shop!). He seems to have bought this as an investment and let the current occupants continue to live in it. The house had been bought in 1932 by Harry Grayson Dixon. He died in 1943 and his widow continued to live in the house after his death, along with her daughter Jessie and her husband Frederick Mudd. They were still living there after Tyson bought the house, presumably paying rent to him.
Tyson died in the Royal Hospital in Sheffield in 1956. The house at 2 Hunshelf Park passed to his widow Mary, and she sold it to Arnold Robinson in 1958. Mary and Alice continued to work in the little shop at Hunshelf Bottom until it was taken over by the Hanwells in about 1956/7.
Mary and Tyson never had any children; sadly, Mary had five full-term stillborn babies. Alice never married. The sisters went to live in a nursing home near Cawthorne before moving to a nursing home at Skelmanthorpe, which is where they died. Mary died in 1989 aged 94 and Alice died in 1994 aged 95.
There are two similar photographs of Rusby’s shop below, one of which can be dated more precisely than the other. The third of the four photographs dates to before 1960. Janet Sanderson’s parents lived in the end house on Ford Lane to which the lean-to shop was attached. Around the time Janet was born a lorry damaged the garden wall and possibly also caused some damage to the house. The lorry had been parked up on Hunshelf Road and was towing a trailer carrying a generator. The driver had got out of the cab and the handbrake failed, causing the lorry to run down the hill and collide with the wall. Janet’s mother, worried about it happening again, had the wall painted with black and white squares to draw attention to the fact it was there (although this would have had no effect on a runaway truck). Janet dates this happening sometime between 1959/60. The family later moved away, into the house known as The Barracks on Bramall Lane, behind the Chemical Laboratory. The fourth photograph was taken after the wall had been painted.
This wasn’t the first accident on this corner. Back in 1934 a Tennant’s Brewery steam lorry ran out of control on the steep incline of Hunshelf Bank. The driver stayed at the wheel and was aiming to steer the vehicle onto Ford Lane, but he saw some children playing in the road there, and although he leaned out of the cab to warn them of the danger, he was forced to try to swing round the sharp bend into Smithy Hill. Unfortunately, with the increasing speed of the lorry, he was unable to get round and collided with a stone wall in front of Bank House, knocking down about five yards of it before stopping on the edge of the bridge. The driver had only minor injuries, but his mate was taken to hospital in a serious condition. They would have been delivering to the Rising Sun on Hunshelf Bank, which was a Tennant’s house.
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THE HANWELLS
Keith and Barbara Hanwell got married in May 1955 and Keith’s father, Jack Hanwell senior, moved them into the family shop at Old Haywoods, Deepcar which belonged to the bakery W. & J. Hanwell Ltd. The following year Jack heard that Rusbys were selling up and he sent Keith to speak to them about buying the business. The actual building belonged to Fox’s at this time, so they must have bought it after Amy Rusby’s death. Keith and Barbara then moved into a house on Bath Terrace, 11a Ford Lane (there had never been a number 13 due to superstition about it being an unlucky number). They were not impressed that they had moved from a house with an indoor bathroom to one with no bathroom, and outside toilets at the end of the row. They lived here until they were able to move into the flat above the shop, possibly in October 1961, after alterations had been made to convert it into one dwelling.
Nigel Hanwell has vague memories of the old Rusby’s shop. There was a long wooden counter to the right as you went in. There was a door into the downstairs flat behind the shop which contained an old black Yorkshire Range. The room was used for storage and was full of boxes. There was possibly an alcove off to the rear right where they made up sandwiches. Butter and sugar were weighed out as you wanted them, and the sugar bags were kept in an old dresser, which was eventually moved into the attic to be used as a work bench.
In the 1960s half the shop was taken up with loose sweets and sweets in glass jars – all the old-fashioned ones such as wine gums, humbugs, lemon sherbets and Fisherman’s Friend. The shop sold nylons (tights), hairnets and sachets of shampoo as well. Living above the shop had its advantages and disadvantages; people calling round at all hours to buy cigarettes for example. Being a keen fisherman, Keith sold fishing tackle for a while, but a mishap with some maggots eventually saw the end of this little venture!
After the Hanwells took over, renovation work was carried out to knock the four flats into one and create a shop inside the building instead of the lean-to, which was demolished; this was perhaps in 1961/2. The rent before the alterations was £2 11s. 1d. a week, which increased to £5 in 1962. It did not go up again until 1978.
When the Hanwells took over the building, there was no one living in no. 2, but there were tenants in the other three flats; Mrs. Firth lived in the bottom left flat, the Watkinsons in the flat top left and the Ollerenshaws in the flat top right. They were all re-housed. Mrs. Firth went to live in one of the new “old folks’ flats” on Pot House Lane just below Whitwell shops. The Ollerenshaws and Watkinsons moved into houses on Ford Lane, the Ollerenshaws to number 9 and the Watkinsons to number 15.
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