Secret Rotherham

by Melvyn Jones and Anthony Dodsworth

Published 15 September 2017
Secret Rotherham offers a unique insight into this bustling, modern South Yorkshire town through a series of little-known and forgotten stories, facts and anecdotes from its past. The town has an enviable industrial history: Nelson’s HMS Victory was armed with Walker cannons made at Masbrough, the iron plates for Isambard Brunel’s steamship the Great Eastern were manufactured at Parkgate Iron & Steel Works, and the firm of Guest & Chrimes invented the modern screw-down tap. Over the centuries the Rotherham area has also had its fair share of famous residents and visitors. It was the home of the Earl of Strafford, who was beheaded in 1641; John Wesley, the ‘Father of Methodism’, was a fairly frequent (if not always welcome) visitor to the area; Ebenezer Elliott, the ‘Corn Law Rhymer’, was born and bought up in the town; and the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams spent many a summer in one of the outlying villages.

In Secret Rotherham Melvyn Jones and Anthony Dodsworth pull back the curtains of history to peer into the borough’s distant and not so distant past to reveal the forgotten, the strange and the unlikely.

Sheffield is the fourth largest city in England and was where the Industrial Revolution began in earnest. It is renowned for its high-quality steel and fine cutlery, for its two large universities and for having the biggest shopping centre in Europe, yet there is so much more to know about this proud South Yorkshire city. In Secret Sheffield, the authors pull back the carpet of history to reveal what lurks beneath. They delve into Sheffield’s murky and mysterious past, its dark secrets and forgotten tales, introducing us to some interesting characters along the way.