Our Town
Penistone is a small market town built of Yorkshire stone and red brick, with rural and urban characteristics. Major landmarks are Penistone Church, the railway viaduct and Hartcliff tower folly, with the elegant Emley Moor transmitter tower a few miles away. We are a small town of distinctive character, surrounded by unspoilt countryside and not contiguous with any other large settlements. We have a town mayor and a very popular community local radio station and, in September every year, 'Penistone Show'. The Show is a wonderful event to demonstrate what Yorkshire and the Penistone area in particular have to offer. It always draws a large crowd from all over the country.
Penistone also has a busy market, a town hall/cinema/theatre, an ancient parish church and the 'Showground' (a large recreational field) close to the main shopping street. The Trans-Pennine Trail is nearby and it is popular with cyclists, dog walkers and horse riders. A large swathe of houses surrounds most of the town. Our main street has various shops, chemists, pubs, food take-aways and two supermarkets. Penistone also has a railway station, police station, fire station and a post office. Penistone Grammar School has a long history which is traceable back to 1392 and it is becoming a mega-school as new buildings go up.
The Tour
Welcome to the main part of this Penistone Pictorial website. This is just a collection of pictures but the difficult part is to give an impression of the personality of our Yorkshire market town. Each section has thumbnail pictures which mostly link to larger pictures. Please note that due to server space limitations and previous eyesight problems, some pictures are poorer than is desirable. My apologies for that. The whole website fits within 100 MBytes.
I hope that you will find something of interest here. The aerial views give an impression of the size and setting of Penistone then there are some privileged views from the church tower and behind the scenes in the Town Hall. My thanks go to Penistone people and ex-pats, who have always been very helpful and supportive of this project.
A Vibrant Community
Where have you heard of Penistone? Was it our legendary ice-cold railway station or Sheffield Wednesday's football ground - on Penistone Road. Farmers know of the Penistone breed of Sheep. Or, perhaps it was Penistone Moors and Penistone Hill in the village of Howarth where the Bronte sisters lived (different etymology). In the old days, people wore 'penistones'. These were cheap but very warm jackets.
Penistone people are quirky and good-natured - and maybe a bit reserved until they get to know you. 'Comers-in' have moved to Penistone from all over the UK after the explosion in house-building in recent times (and have integrated reasonably well) but the sense of community continues to be strong. Various protests in recent years have emphasised the point, almost by accident, that there is a good community spirit to be found in Penistone. If further evidence was necessary, I could assert that a good many people whom I grew up with are still around in the Penistone area.
Anyway here is my humble effort to show you my view of Penistone and to help put us on the map. Read on:
| 1 | Aerial Penistone and in 1993 |
    |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | The Church | ||
| 3 | Views - from the top | ||
| 4 | Pubs in Penistone | ||
| 5 | Town Hall and Cinema Organ |
||
| 6 | Market Street | ||
| 7 | Houses & Streets | ||
| 8 | Trans-Pennine Trail | ||
| 9 | Fire Drill | ||
| 10 | Milking time | ||
| 11 | Library | ||
| 12 | Viaduct | ||
| 13 | Winter Views | ||
| 14 | Penistone at Play | ||
| 15 | Penistone FM | ||
| 16 | Surrounding Area | ||
| 17 | Miscellaneous |
Marking the Territory
Shown below is the Barnsley Council coat of arms, the commemorative PGS church window and the Penistone Mayoral Chain emblem, for your interest. Barnsley's distant council took control of Penistone in the 1970s and now decorates street signs throughout the borough with their coat of arms. It symbolises 'ownership' like a dog marking a lamp-post. It even appears (appropriately) on most wheelie bins. It commemorates Barnsley's past industries but has little relevance to us in the countryside. Our old industries were steel, clay, farming and textiles. Barnsley Council? - Don't get me started! (Like the £9,000,000 they spent on consultants)
The Barnsley Council coat of arms has the Latin motto 'Spectemur Agendo' means 'Judge Us by Our Actions', which I delight in doing at every opportunity. I am no expert in heraldry so these interpretations might be slightly wide of the mark, while the official Barnsley coat of arms page covers even less than my version.
The emblem sports a camp and blousey glass-blower in flared 1970s trousers, standing opposite a serious-looking miner. The griffon appears to have taken a particular dislike to the glass-blower by sticking its tongue out. Unless it's a come-on. I'm not sure what the set-square, doorknobs or roulette wheel are all about but I understand the piece of old rope that the griffon stands on. The crossed pick-axes pick up on Barnsley politics, the hammer and sickle influence from Russia. Cigar tubes are symbolic of the luxurious lifestyle as enjoyed by (currently) over-paid council bosses. The roulette wheel did not appear in the pre-1974 version before local government re-organisation but it is properly called an 'escarbuncle', of the same etymology as 'carbuncle'.
Penistone people think that the Clarel coat of arms would be a far more suitable and relevant 'branding' for street signs (if necessary anyway) than Barnsley's carbuncle. It is more-or-less Penistone's own Coat of Arms and pops up here and there, including behind the stage curtains of the Town Hall.
It is reasonable to ask: - "If we can have our own mayor, why not our own coat of arms?"
Further Info Pages
Local Books
Robinson's News near the church has a good range of local publications for sale. Any out-of-stock books can be ordered for you. The Hallmark card shop also has a small collection of local books. Cawthorne Garden Centre has a wide range of local books.
