Penistone - Market Town

The Town
Penistone was occupied by Britons, Romans, Saxons and Vikings in turn, and in 1066 was owned by Ailric. In 1069 it was devastated by William the Conqueror and was lying waste in 1086. The descendants of Ailric built a church not long after the Conquest.(Penistone Almanack 1956).

The Domesday Survey of 1080 to 1086 refers three times to variants of 'Pengeston'. Other charters use a spelling more like 'Penigestun'. The name might mean - 'The Farm of the Silver Penny' (Penistone Almanac 1984) but other sources suggest that the 'Pen' in Penistone has a Celtic etymology, meaning 'hill'. Anglo-Saxons gave us the 'ton' part, meaning village or farmstead (not town). The Poll Tax Roll of 1379 calls it 'Villata de Penyston'. Estate agents still like to pretend that Penistone is a sleepy village.

Ours has long been an agricultural area but the days when the streets were filled with livestock are long gone and most employment now lies beyond the boundaries of our small town. Before the arrival of the railway in the mid-nineteenth century, the greater industry in the area was wool and textiles, mostly in nearby Thurlstone. Railway access allowed heavy industry into the area, with the Cammel Laird steelworks and David Brown's, in 1934. Hi-tech castings joined in later as David Brown began to shrink. Many Penistone workers were also employed at the Stocksbridge steelworks but this is also in decline. Others were employed at Hepworth Iron Co. - a clayware company which kept its anomalous title long after any interest in iron.

A purpose-built cloth hall in the centre of Penistone did not succeed and was turned into shops, to become Clark's chemist around 1899. Clark's continues as the same family-run pharmacy.

Boundary Stones
Before the days of reliable maps, boundaries were marked out using carved stones. Some still survive, such as the greyhound stone at Bella Vista (on the Hartcliff road), which was mentioned in a 1695 survey of boundaries. It is sited only a few yards from its original location. Another old marker was the 'Penisale Cross', in a field off the same road, which was erected around 1134 by Richard Lovetot and was visible in the middle of a field until recent times. Some say that it marked the location of 'Penisale' market.

Streets, Lanes and Roads
Street names and house numbers started in this area in 1881. Most are named after important local people, like Shrewsbury, Mortimer, Clarel, Dransfield or based on local features, such as Church View Road, Bluebell Avenue, Berry Well, The Green, etc. but a few pretend 'olde worlde' ones have recently appeared, 'Mews', 'Court', etc. I'm waiting for something like 'Wishing Well Mews', so that we can nickname it Horse Trough Drive.

House numbers start from the end of the road closest to the town centre. It is a convention in the UK that odd numbers are on one side of the street and even numbers on the other side. Occasionally, you find that the unlucky number '13' does not exist, but has been replaced by something like 12a. Nearly all houses have a number but some might also have names. Sometimes with old houses, they have only a name. Our area is a postal district of distant Sheffield and postcodes are now prefixed S36 (previously S30).

Housing, 1891 - 1911
(From the 1919 Penistone Almanac)
Penistone was then divided into Urban and Rural districts, with separate councils. I presume that the info comes from the national census, which is taken every ten years, ending with a one. Eg. 1901.

Number of homes - 4793
Housing with children under 16 y.o. - 25%
Properties built
- Before 1919 - 25% (1,198)
- After 1975 - 27% (1,294)
Residents who have lived in the same property for more than ten years - 45%

Current State
Housing development in Penistone has escalated since 1997, raising substantial 'council tax' from each home and greatly increasing the population with many new accents from the south. In 2009, the local steel industry has gone and yet more new houses have popped up on the industrial site.

For at least thirty years, there has not been any significant development in shops, schools, police, fire service, post office, travel or other services to accommodate the increased population. The only noticeable improvement has been the doctor's (group practise) surgery and the addition of a private GP. A new supermarket is being planned but this could hit local traders very hard.

In fact, local public services are in decline. We lost our employment office in the 1960s and our Fire and Rescue service has being cut back. The ambulance service is almost non-existent and police are difficult to contact and seldom visible on our streets. Busses have thin schedules and usually only carry two or three passengers outside of commuting times. Trains are rarely full but have a good, if slightly erratic, hourly schedule.