The Loxley valley is now a peaceful green and beautiful valley where nature often holds sway. But it has been heavily shaped by human industrial activity.
As it flows from Low Bradfield to the River Don, the River Loxley hosts a succession of industrial heritage sites, where its water was channelled into dams and through water wheels.
These water wheels powered a wide range of activities including corn mills, forges, cutlery grinding wheels and rolling mills.
Some of these sites date back many hundreds of years. Some have long since disappeared. Many were destroyed or heavily damaged by the devastating Sheffield Flood in 1864, and in some cases subsequently rebuilt.
But many survive in various states of repair and naturalisation. Today they give us a fascinating and often beautiful insight into our heritage, and into how Sheffield harnessed its natural resources to become a major industrial power.
Some of the sites have national listed building status, for example the Low or Little Matlock hamlet and rolling mill, the old mill buildings at Olive Wheel, and the Malin Bridge Corn Mill.
Recently, Friends of the Loxley Valley worked with other local groups to get all the Loxley valley water power remains placed on the South Yorkshire Local Heritage List.
We’ve also secured funding from Bradfield Parish Council and the North Sheffield Local Area Committee to put up signs and finger posts telling you more about the heritage and landscape that you pass along the valley bottom.
The finger posts are placed at selected water power sites, and contain QR codes that link to information pages on this website. We hope to gradually add to these pages over time, starting with the sites from Malin Bridge to Rowell Bridge. You can link to them from the list below…
The water power sites from Malin Bridge to Rowell Bridge
• Wisewood Forge
• Loxley Steel Works
• Low or Little Matlock
• Olive Wheel
• Please bear with us as we gradually add to this list. This is very much a work in progress.
How can I find out more?
The Loxley Valley sites are featured individually in the book “Water Power on the Sheffield Rivers”, which contains the definitive history of Sheffield’s water power heritage. The second edition of this book was published by the South Yorkshire Industrial History Society in 2006. It is now out of print, but is available in the Sheffield Local Studies Library. Copies can sometimes be found for sale online too.
Earlier books on Sheffield water power are “Where t’watter runs o’er t’weir” by Roy Davey, and “The water mills of Sheffield”, written by W.T. Miller.
Loxley valley water power also features heavily in the book “The River Loxley from emergence to confluence” – which has words by Ron Clayton and photos by Mark Rodgers – and in “Loxley. Wanderings in a Curious Valley” by Peter Machan.
Online, you can read an archaeological report by the Brigantia Archeological Practice into the weirs on the River Loxley. This was commissioned by the Don Catchment Rivers Trust in 2012.
Thank you!
Friends of the Loxley Valley would like to acknowledge and thank all the above authors. We drew deeply on their work when researching these water power pages.
We owe a huge debt of gratitude to so many people and organisations. Thank you! You know who you are! Specifically, we would like to thank:
• The Bradfield Parish Council archivist and local history expert Malcolm Nunn for access to his encyclopaedic knowledge and photographic archives.
• Tony Ball of the South Yorkshire Industrial History Society for his kind permission to reproduce images and photos from their water power book.
• The Rivelin Valley Conservation Group for inspiring us with their excellent signs and QR codes, and helping us to achieve something similar.
• Bradfield Parish Council and the North Sheffield Local Area Committee for the grant funding that made all this possible.
• Peter Machan for setting us on the way when he spoke at our AGM and asked “where are the interpretation signs?”