From places in the parish still retaining the names of Woodthorp, Wood house, we might suppose the neighbourhood to have presented formerly a more sylvan appearance than it does at present. Whether the "Wood-pasture," mentioned in the Survey, be indicated by these places, does not appear. Gleadless and Woodthorp-Common, the scene of the writer's boyish perambulations, have been enclosed several years, and left to memory alone the recollection of pleasures pursued amidst its slopes and plots of greensward, its verdant sheep-walks, and its lofty furze-bushes. The parish of Handsworth contains valuable and extensive beds of coal; from the collieries at Intake, a considerable portion of the coal consumed at Sheffield, and its neighbourhood, is obtained, besides vast quantities constantly converted into coke on the spot, there and at High-Hazles, near Darnal, by the process mentioned in Parke's Chemical Catechism.* In an elevated part of the village of Handsworth stands the Church, which is dedicated to St. Mary, a plain substantial structure, neither interesting from its architecture, nor attractive by its antiquity; although that part used as the chancel seems to identify its erection with some period much anterior to the other part of the structure, this, the body of the church, is intersected by three low and obtusely pointed arches, separating a small side-aisle; the interior quadrangle where divine service is performed, is 16 yards by 11. The inside presents as little to interest the antiquary, as the outside does to attract the architect. The massive and dilapidated pews have an uncouth appearance to a person accustomed to politer accommodations, rudely carved in some instances, and frequently crumbling to dust at the touch of time; the pannels of oak shrinking from their groves, appear "So lose and lash'd awry, Threat'ning ere long in wider wreck to lie," that the sentimental admirer of these specimens of rustic workmanship and village antiquity, pauses between the wish to see the comfort of the congregation increased, and the unwillingness to disturb furniture so venerable. At the west end there is a gallery for the congregation: and opposite, a smaller one was erected in 1800, for the reception of the organ, purchased of Lord Scarborough, at Sandbeck, and considered finely-toned. The chancel, as before-mentioned, is of prior antiquity to the other part of the edificet: although not mentioned in the Norman survey, it is believed to have existed early in catholic times; the walls are very thick, with small lancet-shaped windows, probably ornamented with stained glass originally, as some fragments yet remain. There are no particular monuments: some mural tablets, one to the memory of John Parker, Esq. of Woodthorp, &c. adjoining an escutcheon emblazoned with his arms; and the Smelters of Richmond, with some mortuary memoirs of the Rectors, comprise the principal. In the aisle is a flat stone with this inscription, in capital letters :- "Here * See Northern Star, vol. i. p. 326. † Immemorial tradition relates, that the church was originally projected to have been built at Woodhouse, where the materials were collected; but that during the night, they were removed, by invisible agency, to the scite at present occupied by the edifice! A superstition not confined to this place. lyeth the Body of John Boot, Gent. late of Hansworth, servant to the Right Hon. Gilbert, Earl of Shrevsbury. He was born in the proffession of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and the same John died in the same Christian Faith, in the sixty-first year of his age, the 16 day of June, Anno Domini, 1613, and Ann his wife." On a slab near the chancel door, in capitals, these nearly. obliterated words are inscribed, partly in a border, the rest within its circumference :"Here lieth the Body of Thomas Legge*, late Parson of this Parish. He was a faithful Preacher of God's word both by his life and doctrine; and Grisill his wife, An. Do. 1610." The steeple, rising from the west end of the church, is low, and of an obtuse appearance, it contains three bells, thus iuscribed :--1. "Sacra fiat hic campana Beata Trinitate." 2." Jhesus be ovr spede, 1590, h† 0.”3, 1775. 66 The parish-register commences in the first year of Elizabeth, three years earlier than the similar record at Sheffield, which begins 1561; it is perfectly distinct and legible, but having suffered from the damps, a correct transcript has been very properly made, which, with the original, are carefully preserved.† The living is a rectory, value in the King's books, £12 4s. 7d. ; yearlytenths, £1 4s. 5d.; the advowson belongs to the Duke of Norfolk, who is lord of the manor: it was presented in 1802 by his late Grace to the Rev. Wilfred Huddleston, the present incumbent. The glebe is excellent, and the emolument considerable; a composition is received in lieu of tithes, subject, I believe, to a septennial modification. The real value of the benefice is said to be at least £1200 per annum. About 200 yards from the church stands the school, a respectable stonebuilding, erected by subscription in the year 1800. The first stone was laid by the Hon. and Rev. Philip Howard*, late rector, July 11, for the * He is the earliest rector whose name is recorded. He was buried June 8, 1610, and Succeeded same year by Nathaniel Bownde. It is thus entitled :-"Hansworth Rejister Bok. Beginning in the first year of the raigne of ovr Sovouraigne Lady Queen Elizabeth over England, Anno Dom. 1558." The following are extracts:~ "In 1583, 23 of June, natus est, and the second of Julii, christened John Talbot, filius honorabilis Gilbert Talbot. "1593, Decr. christened William son of Sir Charles Cavendish. 66 1635, June 17, Gavin son of Gavin Hamilton, bapt. 1635, July 9, Mary wife of Gavin Hamilton, Gent. buried. "1645, June 9, Married Thos. Harrison, of the age of threescore and eighteen, to Emott Smith. "1698, July 25, the spire of the steeple struck down by a ball of fire." This gentleman was, I believe, a younger brother of the late Duke of Norfolk, and uncle to his present Grace. He died in 1802, and was buried at London. A railed tomb in the church-yard is raised for the remains of his wife, the Honourable Mrs.Jane Howard, and her mother, wife of Lord Chief Baron Idle, of the Court of Exchequer in Scotland, &c. On a tomb-stone near the above, is inscribed a parental ejaculation to the filial affec tion of Eliz. Benn, daughter of Antonio Benn, of Hensingham, in Cumberland, who died at Sheffield, Sept. 19, 1805, aged 23, on her return from the South. edúcation of a certain number of poor children, to be elected pursuant to the will of Dr. Lockier, formerly rector of this parish, who, with the Hon. Mrs. Jane Howard, wife of the rector, gave the uses of certain monies for its endowment. There are schools also at Woodhouse and Gleadless; the latter is under the patronage of Sheffield National Schools, and conducted on the same system. At Handsworth there was formerly a mansion belonging to that splendid and honourable family, the Earls of Shrewsbury: not a vestige of this building is to be seen; a few houses called Handsworth-Hall Gates máy probably long remain to identify the vicinity of its ancient scite. Mary Queen of Scots, the unfortunate rival and ill-fated victim of Elizabeth, is said to have passed some of her time at this place, while in the custody, (from 1568-1584) of George the sixth Earl.* At Cinder-hill, about half a mile from Handsworth, there is a small enclosure planted with trees, which was appropriated to the purpose of a cemetery about two hundred years ago: it contains several grave-stones, some raised and others lying flat, in various states of dilapidation; not having been used apparently since the above period, the inscriptions, exposed to the weather for such a number of years and the moss covering the stones and filling up the interstices of the letters, are partly obliterated. They record the names of different members of the family of Stacyes who resided at Ballifield and Cinder-hill, and are mentioned among the earliest names of the parish. Their descendants, buried here, were Quakers; they had formerly a meeting-house here, the walls of which were standing till within a few years. This sect seems to have existed in this neighbourhood coeval with their commencement.† They have long had a meeting-house at Woodhouse, at which place the Methodists have recently erected a neat chapel. * The following extract from one of the Earl's letters to Lord Burleigh, especially as it relates to the manufactures of this neighbourhood, may be interesting:-"I have sent you a small rugge by this bearer, to wrappe about your legges at tymes convenient: (the Chancellor was then suffering from the gout) wch yor L. must accept as I present yt, and as though or county wools were mueh fyner and or workmen more curyous; and withal your L. shall receave a case of Hallamshire whittells, beinge suche fruetes as my pore countrey affordeth with fame throughout this realm. Thus comend ing me right hartely to yor. L. I leave you to the tuicon of the Almightie, desiring at yor. best leisure to heare from yor. self of yor. welfare. "From Handsworth the last of January 1589. Could the good old Earl be permitted once more to visit his "pore countrey," how different would be his emotions:- he would most assuredly designate it deservedly by, å very opposite epithet.-Whittles were a common sort of knives manufactured in the early periods of cutlery; Chaucer mentions one who bore "A Sheffield whittle in his hose." + The first Quaker, George Fox, visited this place several times in his perambulations through Yorkshire, and preached to great multitudes of people on Cinder-hill-Green, who were attracted thither by the novelty of his mission and the fame of his ministry. See his Journal. Illustrations of British History, vol. ii. p. 494. Woodthorp, distant about one mile from Handsworth, is the residence of Hugh Parker, Esq. one of His Majesty's Justices of the Peace for the westriding of Yorkshire, and senior magistrate of the town of Sheffield; a man equally respected in his own neighbourhood for his benevolence, and revered for the wise and equitable discharge of his civil duties. Gleadless is an hamlet on the southern extremity of the parish, through which a brook runs separating the counties of York and Derby; here, too, the parochial divisions of Eckington, Norton, and Handsworth converge. At Gleadless there exists an instance of contemporary longevity, in the person of Phoebe Watkinson, who is in her 106th year; her son, an ancient lad of 85, is her companion in the vale of years. On Gleadless-moor is an old building, originally a school, but now decayed and disused.† To the imperfections of the preceding account of Handsworth the writer is feelingly sensible; the captious however would not be conciliated by candour, nor the critical appeased by explanation. Therefore to profess the one, or proceed to the other, he deems unnecessary. For its prolixity he can only apologize by saying, it is sketched by a filial hand: this he hopes may be some extenuation of its faults. His paternal ancestors, in this parish, ran their unambitious round of village-occupations, when, "Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife, Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray; Along the cool sequester'd vale of life They kept the noiseless tenor of their way." Nor does the church-yard present one memento to retrieve from oblivion "their name, their years,' nor "their homely joys and destiny obscure." They have transmitted to the writer of this article the only inheritance they had to bequeath-their name and their poverty: he in return makes the only acknowledgement in his power, by paying this tribute to their memory, and presenting this succinct account of the place which gave them birth. Near Sheffield, Jan. 1st, 1818. J. H. This "dame of ancient days" has been visited by numerous persons from motives of curiosity, who have been gratified by her answers to their chronological questions: for although she has lived to celebrate the commencement of her second centenary of existence, yet so gradual have been the approaches of senility, that most of her faculties are comparatively unimpaired: possessing also much of the cacoethes loquendi peculiar to her sex, her antiquity and quaint unpolished expression has enabled her to owe some comforts of life to the curiosity and kindness of her visitors. † Jethro Holland of Gleadless-common, who was buried Feb. 11, 1772, under the large tree in Handsworth church-yard, is said to have built this school at his own expense; he was a tall athletic man, more than six feet high, and still remembered traditionally in the neighbourhood of Wentworth and similar places, as a collector of Stag-horns, which avocation he pursued upwards of sixty years, furnishing a considerable part of the consumption of that article in the Sheffield cutlery business.-The female above being once asked if she remembered him, answered, "Remember him, aye belike e do, and ne'er knew nowt amiss on him i'my life.” THE DEVIL's ARROWS, NEAR BOROUGH-BRIDGE. ལ་༦༠་མ༠༠་་་ THE History of Knaresbrough contains an interesting account of those ancient pillars, or obelisks, still to be seen in the neighbourhood of Boroughbridge, which are called The Devil's Arrows; but the author of that workappearing to entertain a wrong idea as to their use and the time of their erection, I beg leave to mention what seems to me to have been the real occasion of their being placed there, hoping that the imperfect notice I am able to give of them will incline some of your antiquarian correspondents to favour the readers of the Northern Star with a view of, and their observations on, these venerable monuments of former times. Briefly remarking that these pillars are each composed of a single block of grit-stone of a pyramidal form and from eighteen to twenty feet in length, and referring those, who may wish for a more particular description of their situation, &c. to the one given by Mr. Hargrove, I proceed to notice his opinion of their age and use, which is to the following purport. "Perhaps it will not be the most improbable of all the conjectures that have been formed concerning these obelisks, to suppose that they were placed here by the Romans, and were the meta round which the horses turned at their chariot-races. This supposition will appear more probable, when we consider their form, their situation, and distance from each other, in which we find such a similarity betwixt these remains and several of the Circuses at Rome as makes it almost self-evident." Mr. H. goes on to say that the shape of these obelisks is the same as that of some metæ still remaining at Rome, and judges from all these circumstances that the pillars in question are the ruins of a Circus, used by the Romans during their continuance in this island. To such a conclusion several objections may be urged, the most obvious of which is, that on careful examination, and by a comparison with monuments known for a certainty to have been the productions of Roman artists, they will be found to bear the marks of a much earlier date than that of the Roman empire in Britain: the decomposition of their surfaces, and the deep furrows which the storms of successive winters have made upon them, are certain proofs of the years which must have elapsed since their erection. Taking into consideration their vicinity to Brimham-Rocks, which Col. Valancey informs us took their name from Broum, the Irish Bacchus, answering to the Hindoo Bramah; their situation in the midst of what was in former times an extensive forest; their form, and above all their being on the banks of the rivulet Tut, which no doubt was so called from Teutates, a divinity of the ancient Britons; it appears to me that they were the works of the Druids, and probably worshipped by them as representations of their gods. In the Asiatic Researches Mr. Burrow has described pyramidal stones of this sort, which are to be found in many other countries besides Britain, particularly Egypt and Bengal, as the images of Mahades, an incarnation of Bramah; and we learn from Herodian, that, at Emesa in Syria, the only representation of the Divine Sun is a large stone terminating in a point; |