Upperthorpe, Sheffield
| Upperthorpe | |
|---|---|
 Upperthorpe
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| Upperthorpe shown within Sheffield | |
| Metropolitan borough | |
| Metropolitan county | |
| Region | |
| Country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | SHEFFIELD |
| Postcode district | S6 |
| Dialling code | 0114 |
| Police | South Yorkshire |
| Fire | South Yorkshire |
| Ambulance | Yorkshire |
| EU Parliament | Yorkshire and the Humber |
| UK Parliament | |
Upperthorpe is a suburb of the City of Sheffield, England. It lies 1.2 miles (2 km) west of the city centre. The suburb falls within the Walkley ward of the City. It is an area of residential housing and is bounded by the suburbs of Walkley to the north, Crookes to the west and Netherthorpe to the south.
The date of the first settlement in the Upperthorpe area is not clear; the name itself is a combination of the Danish word “thorpe” meaning “outlying farmstead” and a surname which was the Middle English word for a cooper. This means that the settlement was founded at a time when both Viking and Old English words had been integrated into local speech giving a founding date in the 9th or 10th century. By 1383 the settlement was known as Hoperthorpe which gradually evolved into Upperthorpe over the centuries. By the middle of the 16th century tanning had become a major industry within Upperthorpe with the Rawsons, an ancient Hallamshire family, setting up tanning pits in the area. Their business flourished over the years and they also established tanneries at nearby Walkley and Philadelphia. The industry started to falter in the 19th century and eventually lost out to more established tanning areas in Walsall and Leeds.
Upperthorpe was the location of the first reservoir to supply water to Sheffield. In 1712 John Goodwin and Robert Littlewood were appointed by the town trustees and the Duke of Norfolk to pipe water from springs at the White House, Upperthorpe to Townhead in the centre of Sheffield. In 1737 they were joined by Joshua Matthewman and the first of several reservoirs was built. By the late 1780s the water from the Upperthorpe dams was insufficient to supply the growing town of Sheffield and a new chain of reservoirs was built at Crookesmoor. Upperthorpe remained mainly a farming settlement with the first sign of the encroachment of Sheffield town being the building of Sheffield Royal Infirmary on Upperthorpe Meadows, then half a mile outside the town. The Infirmary opened for patients on 4 October 1797 and received a very good supply of clean water from the Spring Vale stream which flowed down from the vicinity of Crookes village; the stream continued to supply the hospital until 1861.
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Wikipedia