Whatmore Family History

 My father’s cousin, Dougie Dyson, had a fine eye for detail, an astonishing memory and an excellent turn of phrase. With those abilities it is not suprising that his written memories of  his childhood in Attercliffe are of such interest. Dougie’s account was originally typed up by his daughter Josie, and was recently word processed by myself. It is reproduced here by kind permission of Dougie’s daughters, Anne Penton and Josie Pilley.

he pictures which illustrate this account are mainly taken from a wonderful database of old photographs of Old Sheffield, put on the internet by Sheffield Libraries. The database can be accessed at this link: http://www.picturesheffield.com/

Ernest Douglas Dyson (Dougie) was  born in Attercliffe in 1908, the son of George Henry Dyson and his wife Florence Ireland. Both his parents died young and he was adopted by the Hinch family.

He married Winifred Mary Eames and they had two children—Roy William Dyson who died aged only a few weeks old and Anne Evelyn Dyson. They also had an adopted daughter Josephine Evelyn (Josie) Dyson.

Dougie was brought  up in Attercliffe and worked on the railways in and around Sheffield for most of his life so the vivid memories in this booklet are his own.

After his wife died Dougie lived for several years with his daughter Anne, then lived in a residential home at Totley.

Dougie Dyson as a young man    Copyright: Anne Penton and reproduced here by her kind pernmission

Whilst already in his 90s Dougie discovered  a hidden talent as an artist and began to paint pictures of local steel works  and scenery and in 2003 his talent was locally and nationally  recognised when he was awarded the titles of ‘ Oldest Active Artist in the Yorkshire Region’ and ‘Second Oldest Active Artist in Britain’.

Dougie passed away on 25 July 2004 following a short illness.

UP AND DOWN T’CLIFFE : Memories of Old Attercliffe  by Dougie Dyson

Much has been written about Attercliffe but the book I like is the one entitled ‘Old Attercliffe’ by Mr Vine, the past Headmaster of Huntsman’s Gardens School. It is probably the best book and if it is out of print I don’t know why. 

My short, simple but perhaps interesting tale of Attercliffe is as remembered from the time of the First World War of 1914 – 1918 and the twenties and thirties. 

We have all heard about the Wild West through Hollywood and books but we have had our own prospectors  here in Attercliffe in nearby woods and wastelands, in camps and some with families. They were there in coal not gold strikes, staking claims for fuel for home use or working for others who had bigger claims. Little pits were dug, many feet deep. Men, coal and rock  were being hauled up and down these pits mostly by hand, swinging on the end of a rope in a barrel or a bucket. In one or two pits the haulage was by a pony moving perhaps forwards and backwards from a vertically hung wheel. There is enough material here to make films and to write books about. The only thing lacking is gold or gold dust – but rather something coloured black. 

Attercliffe memories of the First War World include the day war broke out, zeppelins held in search lights, women munitions workers in their first ever trouser overalls, half blacked out gas lamps, black treacle instead of sugar in tea, phosphorus buttons worn on coat labels, Ticklers jam, ration books and queues. There were soldiers straight out of the trenches in near full kit, semi black bread, margarine and embroidered post cards sent back from the front line. 

Later memories include prisoners of war going down ‘the Cliffe’ on trams, guarded front and rear, to work on construction at Vickers and the day the war ended when school teachers opened class room doors and announced peace to each other. After that came street parties for the returning men and then the great flu epidemic with burials at night with horses and cabs with their candle lit lamps, in place of cars. 

Of course some times were good as well as bad with satisfied and dissatisfied people. Women liked going down Attercliffe – not up town but ‘down the Cliffe’. They were happy perhaps if they had a £2 cheque to spend at John Banners store or elsewhere. It cost them the equivalent of 10 pence extra to cash the cheque  and they paid off the extra weekly. 

The House of John Banner was where some of the women might be served by their own sons or daughters. A cheque was big at £2 in those days. Even if the cheque was for shoes it would be just as welcome  as it was the passport for a morning or afternoon out down Attercliffe and the cheque would open the doors of Greenlees or Turners perhaps. 

Attercliffe Road in the 1900s showing the ‘Horse and Jockey’, the Central Saloon Hairdressers and Steve Wright and Foster Brothers Outfitters Photo No: 3437 Copyright : Image No : S13136 Sheffield Local Studies Library and reproduced here by kind permission of the Head of Leisure Services

 Saturday was the day for going down or up Attercliffe. This was when you met your relations and their latest news. If you missed them on your way down you would be sure to face them on your way up and you would get to know, amongst other things, the latest bits of scandal. Whilst the women chatted away for perhaps half an hour, the poor kid in the pushchair turned blue with cold – there were no plastic chair covers like there are today. Perhaps that’s why today’s kids seem quieter – you hear some howling  but not half as much as in those days.

Saturday morning – that was the time to get your hair cut and talk football, not forgetting cricket – perhaps in Harry Hewitt’s shop where father and daughter Elsie used to work together, and a son had his shop further down the Common. Did these football loving barbers ever see an F.A. football match? If they did it would have had to have been on a Christmas Day because some working hours were long. The shops would open early and close at 9.00 p.m. – some of them anyhow. It was good to be in Hewitt’s shop on a Saturday. Some of the lads would be in the Station pub next door on Saturday night. There they could talk about the day’s sport and the results. 

Grant and Morton’s – that was the place to get your photograph taken. If you could get there whilst the sun was shining – all the better. There was no lighting like there is today but the photography was very good as some of the old portraits taken there can prove. 

If Sheffield can be called a picture in a golden frame, then Attercliffe can be called a jewel set in a ring of steel – a bit roughened, but a jewel for all that. The steel ring flashed its reflection in the sky  as furnaces were tapped and steel rolled. 

There were between 20 and 30 pubs and beer houses in the district  and they thrived on the three shift system. They did not have to sell food – only what was listed under the name above the door.   

After treading hot plates in rolling mills, melting shops and foundries  the men needed a beer. You could see these men going up and down between shifts, some with faces blackened with sweat and dust unlike today – there were not many washing facilities then. You could tell some workmen by their walk – especially a roller (steel). Most wore sweat towels. These were held in the mouth whilst working as a way of keeping the dust away, or mill men might hold them between their teeth to prevent being pulled through the rolls whilst bending down. 

Carlisle Street, Attercliffe about 1900 showing Kayser Ellisons  Copyright : Image No : S14108 Sheffield Local Studies Library and reproduced here by kind permission of the Head of Leisure Services

Next door to the Post Office Sorting Department in Worksop Road was the Department of Glass Technology and a great man in glass technology called Professor Turner could be seen coming and going there. Another old gentleman called Mr Cufflin in his Churchill hat and carrying his Gladstone bag could also be seen be seen  coming and going on that road. His bag contained his tools of trade and his lunch. I think he was on his way from his home (another hairdressing shop on Eccleshall Road) to his lock-up barber’s shop  near the Baptist Church on Darnall Road. There he could be seen hanging out his new barber’s pole and taking it in again each night. All this was very important as he thought a lot about that particular pole  and it could be stolen for firewood. 

On his way, Mr Cufflin must have passed a dozen or more barbers’ shops with names such as Fleming, Thorpe, Short and Wagstaff etc.  

Two other gentleman could be seen on that road. They were Mr Herbert and Hubert Makin of  the old establishment of William Makin and Sons, Attercliffe Steel Works with their file cutting, forging, hardening and engineering shops. They would have passed plenty more steel works on the way , some large and some small, and would also have passed the beer-off of a man called Hunter who used to tap every bottle bottom of beer he sold with the palm of his hand. Then he would wipe a label on the wet counter and stick it onto a customer’s bottle (boy or girl) and clench tight round it with his fist. This was to stop the young customer breaking the label and taking a swig. This label was, of course, required by law. Of course the young customer got a better chance of a swig when they were old enough to take a jug or pitcher across to Hunter’s. 

Next was the  Blue Bell (Mr  Hurrel) where the best whisky was  the equivalent of 62½  new pence a pint. Further towards the aqueduct was the White Hart and Pheasant (Mr Arliss) at the side of the arches. This pub used to get flooded at the same time as the aqueduct. There you could see boys diving in and out of the flood inspecting the odd submerged car.  On hot summer days these boys would be swimming in the canal above or walking along the parapet of the bridge.  

Many a waterman must have felt as relieved as if rounding the Horn  on arriving at Attercliffe after navigating numerous locks on the way from Goole. The pound stretch from Tinsley to Sheffield was two miles without any more locks (so called pounds). There might be a bit of poling to do around the bends but the boatman had only one more mile to do when he got to Attercliffe and he used to be thankful for this stretch of waterway. Some boats were under part sail, part engine or towed and poled.  

Jenkinsons and the Palace Theatre on Attercliffe Road  Copyright : Image No : S13126 Sheffield Local Studies Library and reproduced here by kind permission of the Head of Leisure Services

Not far from this canal bank was the farm of the Smith family where they could sometimes be seen clay pigeon shooting on the side of the canal on the back part of their farm. One of the Smith daughters was a teacher at St Charles’ School and another was a dressmaker. One son had a milk delivery round while the mother would sell milk and eggs at the door. 

Not far from here was a quarry and a brickyard. Horses pulling carts filled with clay and ganister would have passed through the aqueduct on the way from Coup’s other brickyard to this one and when they reached Makin Road they had to have the assistance of another horse called a ‘chain horse’. A boy would stay on the bottom of the steep road with his horse and when he heard the call, ‘Chain horse’, he would go and hook his extra horse on. Thousands of tons of clay and ganister were taken up to make bricks and mortar and all had to be brought down again. This chain horse lad was aped in the local steelworks. When a man called for another helper he shouted, ‘Chain horse’, and some did work like horses.   

There were some people of note around Heppenstall Lane and Baldwin Street.  Dr Byrnes was one of these and some kids thought that they knew what was in his bag when he got a maternity call. ‘Another one?’ Then there was Father Beasley of St Charles and Charlie Baldock wearing his tweed hat at the family house and shop with partridge, pheasant, venison and hares etc hanging outside along with baskets of crabs, lobsters and mussels. There would be a big halibut and salmon inside, and perhaps a sturgeon at odd times. At one time a big, black, curly haired retriever dog could be seen on the pavement in front, with perhaps a kid on its back. One of Charlie Baldock’s sons could be seen driving his smart horse Turnout – going up and down ‘the Cliffe’ at a cracking pace. 

Next to Baldock’s you would have found Bradbury’s shop with fireworks and Christmas Clubs – ‘Pay what you like – have what you like’ and not forgetting the grand wine and provisions shop at the corner of Oaks Green. 

There was a house at the corner of Effingham Road by the W.M.C. near to the Cholera Monument with its horse drinking trough. This was the house and surgery of Dr Settle. Across the road, higher up, was Markham’s Undertakers where they carried on the business from a fine Georgian house. They had daughters who were teachers. Up Effingham Road near Beardshaw’s works lived F. Knight and Sons, fishmongers.

Horse drawn coaches ran from the Green Dragon at the top of Baldwin Street. 

We must also not forget a man called ‘Fish Bill’ with his donkey and cart. The donkey would be hee-hawing outside the ‘Victoria’, asking for a drink or perhaps from sheer boredom. I have seen the donkey being backed out of the ‘Victoria’ with the cart getting stuck in the doorway! Fish Bill used to drive on his stomach with his feet dangling over the back end of the cart. 

The Victoria was round the corner from the Palace Theatre and the queues for this theatre used to stretch right around past the pub. But there were times when the commissionaire used to shout, “Seats guaranteed to all parts”.  You were lucky to get into the Adelphi Picture House which was built round the old vicarage. This picture house was noted for its orchestra under the direction of a chap called Simpson. 

If the picture houses in the  surrounding areas were full on a weekend, people would make their way down to Attercliffe, even if they had to walk up to a mile or more – but they had no chance with the Adelphi. They might make it at the Globe, the Regent or the Pavilion with a lot of luck. 

Some youngsters were allowed to sit in the orchestra pit of the picture houses, which was a space little more than a yard wide. Although they could see nothing but shadows on the screen if they held their heads up high, they were satisfied because they had been in and they could boast about it and they would hope they would have better luck the next week. If the youngsters caused any trouble there were always the drum sticks to hand! 

In later years that well known  ‘gentleman’  - Taylor, the ‘Duke of Darnall’ – would appear in Attercliffe wearing his bowler hat, swallow tail coat, striped trousers and spats – not forgetting his gloves and a flower for his button hole. After putting away his sweeping brush at Hadfield’s Steel Works where he was a labourer, he would dress up  and wave his gloves to all and perhaps do a bit of traffic supervision. 

Mention Woolworth’s to a poor little drapery shop keeper in the 1930s and she might stamp her foot in rage because when that store was opened she would be lucky if she sold a copper’s worth of baby ribbon in a day and nothing else. When Woolworth’s opened it had buckets and bowls at a price of six old pence (2½ p) and scores of household requirements for just over the equivalent of 1 new p. Woolworth’s was another place where the local women were proud to work – in fact they were full of pride at getting a job at all, although of course not all the women were happy there.  It was  a place where everything was on view and could be handled  and manipulated – a forerunner of the shops we know today and it was the downfall of many small shopkeepers whose customers were tempted away. 

Mary Ann (Polly) Whatmore’s haperdashery shop in Darnall Road, Attercliffe. Mary Ann Whatmore was my grandmother and she was forced out of business when a branch of Woolworth’s opened nearby.  Copyright : Rhys Whatmore

There was about a dozen provision shops in Attercliffe besides small shops. Some were famous names like Liptons, Althams, Maypole, Meadow Dairy, Gallons, Melias, Home and Colonial, Burgons, Gowers and Redmans. Grandmother could take her grandchildren to Cleethorpes for a day  if she had saved up enough stamps from her purchases at Althams, but on the great day she would perhaps not go to town to get on the train nor would she go to Attercliffe Road station near Norfolk Bridge, not if she lived ‘up and down Attercliffe’. She would perhaps go to her own station at the top of Great Central Street, off Chippingham Street and get on the train there. 

A day out to Cleethorpes would be a day to remember – away from the industrial polluted air which in some streets turned your curtains another colour, not to mention what it did to your lungs. Big, tall chimney stacks stood all around and one was climbed by a young local boy for a shilling coin.  

Drapers and outfitters included names like Capps, Turners, Banners, Burtons,  Burgess, and Roses for hats and caps. Shoe shops were Timpsons, Playfair, Lambtons, Greenlees, Public Benefit and Globe. Lambtons had a giant model of a boot as an advertisement, which was drawn by horse around the district. 

There was a milliner called Bailey and a cabinet maker by the name of Beaman. His fine house is now turned into the Aqueduct W.M.C.  There were chemists – Paddon – to name one, and a few herbalists which were very handy if they were open on a Sunday to supply ‘liveners’ after a Saturday night down ‘t’ Cliffe’. There the customers would have a jug of either sarsaparilla, served from the barrel by pump, or stone ginger beer from a stone jar. 

Carters Manufacturing Chemists lost their works in a great fire during the 1920s but it was soon built up again. This was another place where the local lasses found a livelihood. Hamiltons and Chaloners were builders merchants, painters and decorators, Matthews was for furniture, and McGraths was for leather, then further down the hill was Jarmans the jewellers, Pierpoint’s greengrocery stall and Toones for wines and spirits. Across from here you would have found Slacks the bakers and Wiley’s wine and spirit shop. Nearby was the pawnbroker with a passage way at the side where you could slip into the pledge office with your parcel to pawn or redeem, without being seen. The parcel would probably contain a shirt or a pair of trousers, brought regularly. 

Doctors of the district, in addition to those already mentioned, included Farris, Cleary, Kirkpatrick, Nelson and not forgetting Pettigrew. These doctors had their own stocks and some had dispensaries. Some of the cold cures that you could buy were sweet nitre, elderflower and peppermint. Laxatives included Parkinson’s blood and stomach pills, senna pods, liquorice powder, Epsom salts, sulphur tablets and brimstone treacle. There was also goose grease for the chest  and seven rubbing oils for the aches and pains.  ‘Old Arnold’ of Sheffield market would have done some good trade with a stall in Attercliffe. 

Some herbalists did a good trade with the shift workers, opening before 6.00 a.m. Some pubs were also open early, and there was a shop in Newhall road where at dinnertime you could see roast pork, rice pudding and meat and potato pie in big dishes, all hot and steaming. 

Attercliffe was like a kaleidoscope – it had many changing patterns  of street life.  Stalls at street corners sold all kinds of things. If they sold any joints of meat they were all marked with the price just like in a butcher’s shop.  Both sides of the street were very crowded, especially at weekends. Street vendors included pikelet and muffin men, women selling blocks of salt, hot pie and pea men, coal hawkers, newspaper men, and women with bags of apples, nuts or oranges outside picture houses  - not forgetting Oates ice cream such as you can’t find today unless specially made, Hardys the bakers and Fletchers with their new ‘daily bread’ loaf – extra large and at a cheap price.  

There were sets of roundabouts mounted on drays, barrel organs, buskers playing and escapologists wriggling out of chains etc. One old woman used to trudge an old pram on which was fixed a small organ which she used to grind, playing mournful tunes to people as they passed along Worksop Road on a Friday night. The Salvation Army also used to play regularly in the streets, whilst pre-election meetings took place at the public baths corner near the public library.  

The library was where silence was strictly enforced and if you dropped a book on the floor – well! Newspapers could be read on stands around the walls, but all the horse racing sections were blacked out. When changing a book your hands had to be clean. 

There were six billiard saloons and it was, “Come in man and be a Newman or a Joe Davis”. There were dance halls within a mile’s walking distance and there were recreation grounds at Woodbourne Road and Carbrook Road. A recruiting office was between Washford Bridge and Effingham Road and a church nearby where some locals got married. 

Staniforth Road used to have its fairground between Palmer Street and the railway bridge on local feast days.  There were two Co-op stores on Staniforth Road and a bake house opposite Speddings news and stationers, where you used to be able to take your bread to be baked, putting your name  into the bottom of the pot first on a small slip upside down. John Dunn’s beer-off was just above. He had his own bottling plant there in Wilfred Road. It was also in Wilfred Road that hay was chopped up by machine in a small shop opposite Sanderson’s furnaces. Young people had great fun sledging and trolleying down this road, there being no houses either side except one for Sanderson. 

Round the corner at the bottom was Kayser Ellison’s works and round the other corner was Bowler’s fruit and vegetable shop and house – not forgetting Knutt’s beer-off in Bridport Road. On open ground near here was another place where there was a fair, part of what they called Little Attercliffe. Then there was Doctor Lane at the top of which were the houses and stables of T. Smith and Sons. They had some fine horses, but later a fleet of brand new Ford trucks could be admired there as horses gave way to motor power – a good thing. 

There was a nice row of cottages at the canal side of Tinsley Park Road. A man could spot a barge or boat coming under Broughton Lane Bridge and arrange for his wife to be carried on her visit to the Sheffield Canal Basin (wharf) to buy her flour at the Sheffield Corn Exchange. He would set off and walk there on the tow path and then prepare for the return journey of his wife, and that was another day out for them. This was in the days before electric transport.  

Canal Cottages, Tinsley Park Road in the 1950s. My great great grandfather Thomas Glave was living here in 1869.  Photograph by Llewelyn Roberts  Copyright : Image No: t00515 Sheffield Local Studies Library and reproduced here by kind permission of the Head of Leisure Services

Down by the road at the side of the canal, women could be seen holding up their aprons and walking behind coal and coke carts, to catch any fuel that happened to fall, the roads at that time being very uneven, but if the carts carried gas cokes then these would be avoided as some of these weighed pounds. Small coke also fell and could be picked up or caught in the women’s aprons. It was used in blacksmiths’ shops and for file forging and cutlery. Gas coke was a by-product of coal. Graded coke was used by steam trucks such as those belonging to Brown Baileys and Spear and Jackson – another type of vehicle travelling round ‘the Cliffe’. 

Attercliffe has some fine hilly country around it and even at the lowest point of Attercliffe around Newhall Road it is 100 foot above sea level. Both ends of this road have been traversed by Kings and Queens and by those studying the industries along the course of the Don – one of those place where you might perhaps  have expected to find a starched cuff being furtively used as a notepad. Houses used to be down both sides of Newhall Road.  

There were cottages and courtyards in Worksop Road – some with gardens in front and there were a few just the other side of the aqueduct. There were some nice cottages down in Oakes Green and some almshouses at the end of Kirkbridge Road. There were houses in Princess Street and beside the Don at Washford Bridge and all down Trent Street, Washford Road, Effingham Road and Windsor Street – all these before the demolitions of recent years. 

Going towards Hilltop you would have passed some almshouses opposite the Labour Exchange and higher up Roses, Lee’s  wine shop and beer-off  and, Dr Pettigrew’s, Bulingers (pork butchers) and opposite was a hardware shop, a chemists, Welbons (fishing tackle) and Gowers (groceries)  at the end of Frank Place – not forgetting two shops you would have passed – Hudsons (bicycles) and Marslands (clogs and leather). Just past the old cemetery was Savages (pianos etc).  

There were houses all up Coleridge Road and on Old Hall Road and on one side was Brown Bailey’s metal bank with a crane and overhead track. All along the side hanging chains could be seen. These were to stop flying metal hitting pedestrians passing on the road side. Not far from here was the Plough Inn which was swallowed up by the works later on and the White Hart which they could not swallow, so it remained after all the other properties were demolished including Attercliffe church. After serving the community for 120 years the church was damaged by bombing during the Second World War. 

Within half a mile skylarks could be seen rising and heard singing. House window sills displayed jam jars containing bluebells and buttercups gathered from nearby fields and woods, and here and there on the sills would be oven bottom bread cakes cooling off and sometimes also the odd jar containing a few minnows or caterpillars. 

People to be seen doing their rounds on foot were glaziers carrying glass in wooden frames, which were very heavy, strapped on their backs.  There were chimney sweeps, lamp lighters with long poles and ‘knockers up’ with long poles to rat tat on bedroom windows. There were piano tuners, debt collectors, midden emptiers, second hand clothes dealers, scissors grinders, peppermint sellers, rag and bone men and women and, after the heavy snows, shifters. 

Children could be seen taking their father’s dinner or supper to the works, with basins wrapped in red handkerchiefs containing perhaps potatoes, turnips and a quarter pound of steak with a slice of bread on top. An old woman, out of habit, would continue to take her son’s dinner after he had left home and got married, to make sure he would still get a cooked dinner. Many men carried wicker dinner baskets which came in handy for bringing a bit of firewood back home and for carrying their gauges for measuring steel if they worked as rollers. 

Like everywhere else, children’s games and entertainments in the streets were skipping, in which the women would take part, rounders, peg top, shuttle cock, whip and top, hopscotch, piggy back, hide and seek and running. They also played with small cardboard boxes with holes cut out for cherry stones to be thrown in and took part in kite making and shop window guessing games. 

Children’s jobs were fetching coal in a barrow, perhaps from Freemans or Blunts, fetching the paraffin for the lamps or bringing flour and potatoes from the Co-op in a barrow, lathering men’s faces in barbers’ shops after school hours, and on a Saturday morning, delivering meat or fish with a basket on their hip. Children also worked by holding horses, perhaps outside pubs, pushing prams and pushchairs – sometimes to collect fuel from a nearby tip, chopping and selling firewood, helping to get colliers’ loads of coal in, and on odd occasions – going down a neighbour’s cellar grate to open the front door when they were locked out. 

Shortbridge Street was where the main post office was and some local lads were employed riding red bicycles delivering telegrams. 

Attercliffe men used to go to the greyhound track at Darnall. There were some official disqualifications in those days, I think. 

They had their own Labour Exchange in Attercliffe for years and a lot of poor chaps thought they had gone to the dogs when they had to go there. There was no privacy, with long queues outside during the 1930s. Green cards were issued to take them on fruitless missions to some jobs that seemingly never existed. What did exist was the ‘means test!’ 

Liptons in Attercliffe Road about 1910  Copyright : Image No : S00811 Sheffield Local Studies Library and reproduced here by kind permission of the Head of Leisure Services

A man who had signed on at the Labour Exchange could cycle to Cleethorpes for a week’s holiday, staying under a tent in all weathers, but he would have to leave his wife with his parents or whoever happened to be on holiday with him and his wife, and cycle back on Tuesday to write down his name at the Exchange – no matter how much of a battle it was to get back or how bad the weather. 

The only hope for some unemployed men was a part time job, perhaps at Christmas on the Post Office delivery team – not much to hope for! The unemployed man had to be forever making fruitless appearances at all the local firms to prove that he was searching for a job. That was the degrading bureaucratic system, perhaps good in some cases, but nevertheless bad in a lot of cases. 

Christ Church Attercliffe about 1850  Artist: I Shaw  Lithograph by L J Rawlins  Copyright : Image No : S04774 Sheffield Local Studies Library and reproduced here by kind permission of the Head of Leisure Services

Near the cliff where the otters used to swim and play were salmon pastures in stretches of water. Now have gone the salmon, the otters, the bird life and the church, and so on through ‘Ottercliffe’ flows the polluted Don, and so it will be while ever buildings or industry line its banks.