View of Penistone Centre and Church

Penistone Pictorial banner

Aerial View of Penistone Church
I guess the picture to be about 1923. I don't have a modern aerial view to compare with this one. It had to be after the Great War of 1914-18 as there is a war memorial by the church, which would have arrived around 1920. It says 1926 on the back of the picture but that must be wrong, as the current clock was installed in 1924 and would have been in pristine condition. It is difficult to understand the view of the clock. It looks more like a sundial but it might have been that moment when the new clock was about to be fitted.

1924-ish Close-up
Church clock

Study the close up picture, centre. It looks like livestock in the street near to the church. The white area top left is the playground for St. John's School, now a community centre. On the school building is a tall pole, which might have been a wireless aerial.

Cockpit LaneJust below the school is Woods printers and their '18 foot wide right of access' (on property deeds and still in use) to the end of the just-visible Cockpit Lane. This emerges on to Church Hill near the site of the old Grammar School.

The wider view of Penistone is dominated by the broad sweep of the Sheffield to Manchester railway line, with the viaduct to Huddersfield just visible top left. To its right is 'Station Row', fourteen houses which were demolished in the 1960s, on what is now Church View Road. To their right are allotments and I would say that the current 'Penistone Church Football Club' and recreation ground would have been built in the next field. Below the houses is a building on its own which I believe was once a chapel but is now a clinic.

Notice how Church Hill, to the left of the church, is coated in mud and appears to have been the more important road than Shrewsbury Road, at the right of the church. Their roles are reversed now and Church Hill is a one-way street, catching out the unwary at least once a week. At the bottom of the picture is the livestock market but the fire and ambulance station had not yet arrived when this picture was taken.

All of the fields top centre are now covered with houses but was used for Penistone Show on at least one occasion. The large yard, bottom centre, was probably a holding area for animals about to meet their doom, as the slaughter house was nearby.


Back Top Home