The Parish of Kirk Sandall.

Doncaster itself is noted for its Roman past. Although we do not know for certain whether there was any Roman occupation at Kirk Sandall, recent archaeological study has suggested a small Roman fort at Long Sandall (possibly to monitor boats passing up the River Don from the Humber estuary before they reached the main fort at itself). Aerial photography has also revealed crop marks round that could be Iron Age or Romano/British.

Kirk Sandall is associated with the ancient Saxon ‘kingdom’ of Conisbrough, which at one point covered the greater part of along the course of the Don. However the size of this royal estate had been reduced by the time of the Norman Conquest.

After the Norman Conquest Conisbrough became part of the lands awarded to the Earl of Warren. His initial base was in Sussex and included the Abbey of Lewes. By 1086, at the time of the Domesday Book, he was shown to have land in twelve counties, including Conisbrough with its many Saxon manors. In turn he parcelled some of this out to his supporters. One of these, Sandale, is listed in the Domesday Book where the description mentions ‘ a Church and a priest’. Sandall means ‘a sandy place by a river’ and it seems as though the adjective Kirk (meaning church) was added, perhaps to distinguish it from other Sandalls nearby (e.g. Sandal near Wakefield).

The parish of Kirk Sandall with its parish church dedicated to St. Oswald, once covered a very large area including what is now Armthorpe, Edenthorpe, Long Sandall, Wheatley and Trumfleet. (Because of the distance from Armthorpe that community had its own chapel of ease until it was given separate parish status in 1175 when the chapel was incorporated into a new church dedicated to St. Leonard and St. Mary.)

The place name Edenthorpe does not appear before 1871. Before then it was known variously as Stirestorp (meaning Styr’s farmstead), Tristop and eventually Streetthorpe. Perhaps the latter refers back to its Roman connections as place names containing the word ‘street’ often suggest the presence of an actual, or believed, Roman road. When in 1871 the estate was bought by Lord Auckland he was annoyed by the variety of spellings in use and, using his family name ‘Eden’, renamed it Edenthorpe. If you look at some of the older gravestones at the back of Page 1 of 3 the church against the boundary fence you will see the name Streetthorpe on some of them.

Before the South Yorkshire Navigation Company cut the stretch of canal that removed one of the many loops on the River Don in the 1820s, Long Sandall was connected to Kirk Sandall by a footpath whose existence can be seen on old maps. You can still see the Kirk Sandall end of this just up from the church before it disappears under the industrial estate. Once the canal was built the towpath provided an alternative route.

The western boundary of the parish extended into Wheatley going as far as the Wheatley Hotel. This was the location of the Sandall Brick and Tile Works (under what is now Sandall Park) with Sandall Grange opposite (under the council estate on the north side of Barnby Dun Road).

Trumfleet, which is on the opposite bank of the River Don, seems to have been included in the parish of Kirk Sandall because the Earl of Warren granted the income from the churches in his new lands to the monks of Lewes who appointed the clergy. Administering the area from such a distance they seemed to have overlooked the logistical problems, for both the clergy and the parishioners, of linking two small communities, geographically close, but on opposite sides of a substantial river. The modern church did not get round to rectifying this until 1875 when it linked Trumfleet to Haywood which in turn was moved into the parish of Barnby Dun in 1981.

Despite covering a large area the number of people living in the parish of Kirk Sandall was never very great until the expansion caused by the arrival of Pilkington’s Glass Works in 1920. Joseph Hunter’s Deanery of Doncaster (written before 1828) described it as having only 192 persons. Mostly it reflected a few clusters of cottages around St. Oswald’s Church, the two ‘big’ houses of Sandall Grove and Edenthorpe Hall, the canal lock at Long Sandall, the brick works (where Sandall Park now stands) and the many farms dotted around the landscape.

The earliest (1841) Census for Streetthorpe, Commonside (roughly where Pilkington’s Bowling Club now stands),Kirk and Long Sandall lists 113 inhabitants with the majority of people owning/farming or working on the land or as house/ farm servants. As might be expected Long Sandall features some more unusual occupations mostly allied to the canal or the

Page 2 of 3 brick works. 60 years later, the 1901 census return had risen to 281 with jobs linked to the railways playing an increasing part.

Agricultural labourers were the most numerous occupational group in the villages of the 1800s. They were men who worked on the farms and who had no land to give them any independence. Those who did have land (whether rented or owned) were different in status – terms such as ‘cottager’ were used to describe them. Often they were hired on annual contracts and in the mid-1800s it was still common to obtain their jobs at an annual hiring fair or ‘statutes’ (school log books refer to the Robert Woods Free Grammar School adjacent to St. Oswald’s Church closing for the day/s of the ‘Doncaster Statutes’) when those wanting a job stood in the market while prospective employers came round looking for likely workers.

Employed by the day they lost pay if they were unable to work. It was hard, physical labour with low pay (between 10 and 15 shillings per week) although this could be slightly higher in the north of because of growing competition from the factories of the Industrial Revolution. An average sized farm might have 5 or 6 regular labourers. It is difficult to establish for whom and on which farm agricultural labourers worked if they were not included on the farm listed on a census return. Sometimes they lived in independent accommodation or in a cottage provided by the farmer or landlord. At busy times of year such as sowing or harvesting, other family members including wives and children of all ages were often brought in to work on the land – much to the consternation of the schoolmaster.

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