The huge stone blocks that you see in the featured photos are the imposing remains of the historic Loxley Steel Works.
They now stand silently, sharing their space with moss, ivy and the trees that have set root around them.
But the “Water Power on the Sheffield Rivers” book tells us that this site once pulsated with the sound of three water wheels, five hammers and a busy forge.
Edwin Denton rebuilt the site as Loxley Steel Works in 1868 after the earlier Broadhead Wheel was washed away by the Sheffield Flood in 1864. Loxley Steel Works was also known sometimes as Denton’s Forge.
The wheels were powered by the Broadhead dam, which now stands silted, empty and bramble-strewn just beyond the piled stonework.
The Water Power book tells us that the massive stone blocks are the back walls of two wheel pits. Their dimensions suggest the wheels would have been 16 feet in diameter, with one eight feet wide and the other six feet wide.
At the distance of all these years, it’s fascinating to ponder how such enormous blocks could have been cut at local quarries, transported here and lifted in place.
A carved stone gate post mark the entrance to Loxley Steel Works off Loxley Road
Loxley Steel Works and its predecessor Broadhead Wheel was one of four water power sites to be fed by the small Ashton Carr weir, just downstream of Low Matlock. The other sites were Ashton Carr Wheel (destroyed in the 1864 flood), Green Wheel and Glass Tilt.
Water from the weir fed four dams before it was channelled back to the River Loxley about half a mile lower – an ingenious feat of water power engineering.
Historical records tell us that by 1897 the site was occupied by another member of the Denton family, Mary Denton. It was steam powered by 1907. By 1931 it was unoccupied. The 1935 Ordnance Survey map shows no buildings left on the site.
What’s the heritage status of the site?
Loxley Steel Works and the other Loxley valley water power sites are now recognised for their heritage significance on the South Yorkshire Local Heritage List, following a successful submission by Friends of the Loxley Valley and other local groups in 2023.
Thank you!
We are indebted to many people and sources for their help in putting these water power pages together.
We would like to thank Tony Ball of the South Yorkshire Industrial History Society for his kind permission to reproduce images from their excellent book “Water Power on the Sheffield Rivers”. Much of the research for these pages is based on the authoritative water wheel histories in that book.
We would also like to thank Bradfield Parish Council and the Sheffield City Council North Local Area Committee for their generous funding of the interpretation signs and finger posts that we have put up along the valley.
