Elizabeth Hutton (1867–1939)

A descendant of the Huttons of Mosborough and Ridgeway

Elizabeth Hutton was born in 1867 into a family whose roots lay amongst the established communities of Mosborough, Ridgeway and Hackenthorpe, and whose history was closely associated with the Sheffield district’s traditional metalworking industries. Although her own life was largely spent in Sheffield, she acquired an unexpected place in the city’s history through her involvement, as a young girl, in the affairs of the notorious burglar and murderer Charles Peace.

Elizabeth was the daughter of Richard Hutton (1843–1913), born at Hackenthorpe, Derbyshire, and his wife Sarah Ann, née Coggin (1842–1920), who was born at Whiston, near Rotherham. Richard was the son of Mark Hutton (1815–1884), a sickle maker born at Mosborough, and his wife Ann, née Lee (1817–1871), also born at Mosborough. Through her father, therefore, Elizabeth belonged to the Hutton family of Mosborough and Ridgeway, a family with a long-established association with the manufacture of sickles and other agricultural edge tools.

The Huttons were amongst the better-known families associated with the traditional sickle and scythe-making industry of the district. Their history can be traced back to the apprenticeship of Richard Hutton, son of Henry Hutton of Swinton, in 1678, when he entered the service of Thomas Staniforth, sicklesmith of Ridgeway. Over succeeding generations, members of the family established themselves as manufacturers and craftsmen, developing a business which eventually exported agricultural implements to markets overseas. Mark Hutton, Elizabeth’s grandfather, represented the continuing presence of this traditional industry in Mosborough during the nineteenth century.

Elizabeth’s maternal ancestry was equally rooted in the locality. Her mother, Sarah Ann Coggin, was the daughter of George Coggin (1818–1881), born at Eckington, Derbyshire, and his wife Martha, née Gibson (1817–1888), who was born at Wadworth, Yorkshire.

It was, however, an episode in Elizabeth’s childhood which brought her into the public eye. In February 1879, when she was only about eleven or twelve years old, she became involved in the proceedings surrounding the trial of Charles Peace, whose murder of Arthur Dyson at Banner Cross, Sheffield, in November 1876 had attracted widespread attention.

Peace had maintained a relationship with Catherine Dyson, Arthur’s wife, and the circumstances of their association became an important feature of the subsequent criminal proceedings. The trial at Leeds Assizes in February 1879 examined not only the circumstances of Arthur Dyson’s death but also the relationship between Peace and Catherine.

“Do you know this girl?” — An imagined reconstruction of eleven-year-old Elizabeth Hutton being brought before Catherine Dyson at Charlie Peace’s trial, Leeds Assizes, 1879.

The transcript of the trial reveals that Elizabeth Hutton had been employed by Catherine Dyson to carry messages. In particular, she carried receipts relating to pictures between Catherine and Peace and may also have conveyed other communications between them. Her involvement appears to have been at Catherine’s instruction, rather than arising from any independent association with Peace.

The episode is an unusual one in Elizabeth’s otherwise relatively obscure life. It places a child from a Mosborough family within the circle of people whose activities were scrutinised during one of the most notorious murder trials of Victorian Sheffield. The newspaper reports of February 1879, including those appearing in the London Morning Advertiser, provide an important contemporary record of her involvement.

After the trial, Elizabeth returned to the family home and continued to live with her parents. Following 1879, the family were residing at Tinsley Park Wood, Sheffield, where Elizabeth spent the remainder of her unmarried years.

On 27th October 1887, at Christ Church, Attercliffe, Sheffield, Elizabeth married James Thomas Portmore Morris (1855–1923), who had been born at Ilkeston, Derbyshire. The marriage marked the beginning of a new chapter in her life, away from the family associations of Mosborough and Hackenthorpe.

By the time of the 1891 Census, Elizabeth and her husband were living at 33 Brough Low Lane, Attercliffe, together with James’s mother, Harriet. Elizabeth was then employed as a dressmaker, a skilled occupation which she evidently pursued during the early years of her married life.

Ten years later, the couple were living at 5 Peacock Row, Shepcote Lane, Tinsley, Sheffield, according to the 1901 Census. They remained in the Sheffield area, where Elizabeth continued her married life until her death.

Elizabeth died in Sheffield on 24th November 1939 and was buried at Tinsley Park Cemetery. She had lived through a period of considerable change in Sheffield and its surrounding villages, from the days when the local sickle-making industry remained an important part of the district’s economy to the very different industrial and urban landscape of the early twentieth century.

Her life is perhaps best remembered for that brief and rather remarkable episode in 1879, when, as a young girl of a well-established Mosborough family, she found herself acting as a messenger in the affairs of Charles Peace and Catherine Dyson. It is a small but intriguing footnote to the history of one of the most notorious criminal cases of the Victorian age, and an unusual link between the family history of Mosborough and the wider history of Sheffield.

The Mosborough School Riot, 1791

Mosborough folk are not prone to rioting, not now, not ever; but one thing they are passionate about is their School. In 1791, their School was under threat.

The occupier of Mosborough Hall, Thomas Stones (1726-1797), was the grandson of the School’s founder, Joseph Stones (1639-1680). In 1791, Thomas was in financial difficulty. In a final act of desperation, he had sold Mosborough Hall and was about to move to Chesterfield. Before he left, he had sold or let the land belonging to the school endowment so that the schoolmaster, John Fox, would get no benefit from it. Stones had nominated John Fox for the appointment some 20 years earlier in 1770.

Now the School was in crisis. Replacement trustees had not been recruited to manage the School for years, and the appropriate transfers of land ownership to the present trustees had not been made. Inevitably, the community associated John Fox with this state of affairs, and in 1791, matters came to a head.

A crowd assembled outside his house on School Street, and a riot ensued. These were not the type of troublemakers one might expect, but rather some of the leading figures in the local community, among them Joseph French, farmer; John Story, shoemaker; Frances Webster, spinster, John Cowley, sicklesmith; George Story, shoemaker; Elizabeth Horner, wife of George (nailer), William Hobson, farmer; Sarah Taylor, wife of Thomas (mason), James Cowley, scythesmith; Joseph Webster, shoemaker; George Hutton, sicklesmith; William Gray, yeoman; John Gray, grocer; William Rose, wheelwright; John Bradshaw, maltster, George Thompson, schoolmaster and George Gosling, constable.

John Fox, along with his brother Jonathan and father Stephen, were assaulted in the process. His stack of hay was pulled down and some of it was taken away. George Gosling was also assaulted while attempting to keep the peace.

John Fox was forced to leave the School House, and George Thompson was appointed in his place.

The Remarkable Family History of William Stratford of Mosborough, Silver Plater (1787-1859)

William Stratford was born on 24 March 1787 on Spring Street in Sheffield, the son of Thomas Berry Stratford, a scissor maker, and his wife Susannah (née Kelsey). At thirteen he began an apprenticeship with Smith, Knowles, Creswick and Co., plate workers based on Arundel Street. He first trained as a silver candlestick hand before becoming a spinner, a specialist in shaping metal on a lathe—a technique central to the production of both plated and solid silver wares. By 1833 he appeared in local trade directories as a silver plater working in Bramall Lane, long recognised as a hub for workshops producing domestic and ceremonial silver plate.

In 1812 William married Mary Grey at Rotherham Minster. She was the daughter of William Grey, a pen and pocket knife maker of Lambert Street, Sheffield. The couple made their home in the Spring Street and Bramall Lane area and raised eight children between 1816 and 1832. Mary died on 22 October 1834, aged forty‑one.

After a productive working life, William retired at the age of seventy‑one to Kelgate House in Mosborough. Although no direct connection to Mosborough is known, his move echoed a common pattern among successful craftsmen who, having prospered in Sheffield’s industrial districts, later sought the quieter surroundings of its semi‑rural outskirts. He died at Mosborough and was buried at St Peter and St Paul churchyard, Eckington, on 23rd April 1859 (memorial image attached).

According to Robert E. Leader’s Reminiscences of Old Sheffield: Its Streets and Its People (1875), William also possessed an unusually distinguished lineage. Leader recorded him as the nineteenth in descent from John Stratford, who served in the Parliament of Edward III in 1320. Through a later marriage within the family—specifically that of John Stratford, who died in 1533—he was also linked to the line of William de Traci, one of the four knights implicated in the murder of Thomas à Becket. This ancestry connected William not only to the Dukes of Normandy but also to the early Saxon kings of England, as de Traci himself was descended from Ethelred the Unready and Queen Emma, daughter of the third Duke of Normandy.

Mosborough’s Open Fields – A Glimpse into Our Medieval Landscape

Long before today’s neat hedgerows and housing estates, Mosborough’s landscape was shaped by a very different system of farming — the open fields. The earliest permanent buildings were probably clustered around the site of Mosborough Hall, perched on the 127m contour line — the highest point locally — overlooking Mosborough Moor to the west. This commanding spot may even have been the site of the early English “fort of the moor”, from which Mosborough gets its name.

From here, the surrounding slopes were divided into great open fields, their layout still traceable in the shape of later enclosures and in the place-names recorded in manor court rolls and 18th-century maps. These fields weren’t hedged or fenced like modern ones. Instead, they were divided into long narrow strips, cultivated by different families under a shared, carefully regulated system. Each villager farmed scattered strips across different fields, sharing ploughing schedules, crop rotations and grazing rights.

Three main fields surrounded Mosborough (see image attached):

Street Field lay west of Mosborough Hall, bounded by Station Road, Street Field Lane, Hollow Lane and Beighton Road. By 1795 it covered around 67 acres, divided between 18 occupiers. Parts of this land, including Swainhouse Field and Knowle Hill Field, had earlier been divided into smaller plots, hinting at centuries of cultivation. It has been suggested that the Streetfield name is associated with the Roman road, Rykneld Street.

Church Field stretched south towards St Peter and St Paul’s parish church. By the late 18th century, it was bisected by Sheffield Road and enclosed by Beighton and Park Mill (now Gashouse Lane) Roads, covering about 95 acres worked by 12 occupiers.

Street Field and Church Field were separated by a group of long strip-like fields running east to west, named Green Balk; “balk” in Middle English meaning an unploughed ridge of land separating fields. In a manorial survey dated 1480 Green Balk was occupied by Robert Rotherham of Mosborough.

Lee Field lay north of Mosborough Moor. In 1795, just two men – the Earl Fitzwilliam of Wentworth Woodhouse and Thomas Staniforth of Mosborough – held its 32 acres. Nearby “Harbour Friths” fields to the north, with their irregular shapes and woodland names, point to early assarts – clearings cut from the medieval woods.

Plumley had its own open field, St John’s Field, lying south of Plumley Lane and stretching down towards Lady Bank Wood. This 12-acre field was shared between four occupiers, and may correspond to “The Singels Field” mentioned in manor records of 1634.

Under the old open field system, each of these great fields would have been divided into strips and cultivated according to a communal crop rotation. One field might lie fallow while another grew winter wheat and a third spring barley or oats. After harvest, the fields were thrown open for common grazing, and livestock wandered over the stubble, manuring the land for the next year’s crop. It was a cooperative way of farming that tied the whole village together in a shared rhythm of work, decision-making, and landscape.

This ancient system survived here for centuries, gradually giving way to enclosure in the late 18th century, when hedges were planted, boundaries fixed, and strips consolidated into larger fields. But the names of Street Field, Church Field, Lee Field, and St John’s Field still echo the medieval past — reminders that beneath our roads and housing estates lies a landscape once ruled by communal plough and shared pasture.

The “Priest’s Well”, Mosborough

While not strictly in Mosborough since 1967, the Priest’s Well at Eckington has been added to our Character Buildings and Structures List as it falls within the boundaries of the ancient Manor of Mosborough, making it relevant to the heritage of our community. Dating back to the building of the Parish Church around 1100 AD, the well was used by the parish priest to draw water and continued in use by travellers until the 1930s. (With thanks to Ground and Air Media of Eckington for permission to reproduce the photograph).

“The Malthouse”, Station Road, Mosborough

The story of the Malthouse on Station Road begins in 1818, on land that had only recently been transformed. For centuries, Mosborough Green had been open ground, where villagers grazed their animals in the old communal way. But the Enclosure Act of 1796 changed all that, carving the Green into private plots. One of these, a modest parcel beside Station Road, was allotted to Thomas Lindley. On it, new buildings soon rose—the beginnings of the Malthouse.

By 1826 the property had taken shape: a house with its garden, a stable and cowhouse, and, most importantly, the maltings that gave the site its name. Its first known occupant was Jonathan Oates, a maltster born in 1762, whose trade was essential to brewing and village life. Just a year later, however, Jonathan decided to sell up, advertising the property in the Sheffield Independent as “newly built within the last nine years.” His name then fades from local records. George Foster, writing years later, recalled that Oates had emigrated to America, and indeed his widow Hannah died in Marietta, Ohio in 1867. Jonathan himself disappeared into the wide unknown of the New World.

Ownership next passed to Harvey Slagg, eldest son of William Slagg of Mosborough Hall. Harvey had married well—Eliza Lowe of Unstone in 1829—but life was not kind to him. Eliza died young in 1836, and before long Harvey’s finances crumbled. He tried to sell the malthouse, kiln and dwelling in 1847, but within two years he was bankrupt.

The timing was unfortunate. Across England, the malting trade was in decline, caught between changing tastes, new technologies, and tightening regulations. By 1853, when the property went under the hammer again, it was in the hands of a Mrs Billam—likely the widow of Samuel Billam, a maltster and innkeeper at the Fox and Hounds in Marsh Lane. Samuel had briefly operated the Malthouse before his death in 1852, leaving his widow to manage what she could.

Soon afterwards the property passed into the hands of William Lowe, who took it on after his father’s bankruptcy. He let it to William Turner, a prosperous sickle and reaping-hook maker who also farmed thirty acres. Turner, however, had little use for the old maltings, which lay idle and unoccupied for years. By the time he retired in 1875, the industry that had once justified their construction had vanished altogether.

That same year the Ordnance Survey shows the inevitable: the kiln and malthouse were pulled down, and a neat row of cottages rose in their place. They became known as Malthouse Row. The original house and outbuildings survived, though, and by 1881 they were home to Charles Poole, a farmer and carrier who ran a regular service between Mosborough and Sheffield’s Pheasant Inn. His life at the Malthouse was long and steady; he raised his family there and, poignantly, it was from there that he petitioned the Burial Board in 1877 to allow his infant son William to be the first interment in Eckington’s new cemetery.

Charles Poole lived on in the old house until 1923, dying at the remarkable age of 88. He was buried in the same grave as his child, closing a chapter in the life of a building that had witnessed the rise and fall of Mosborough’s malting trade, and then found quieter purpose as a family home.

With thanks to the current owner of the property for assistance and for permission to publish this short summary.

The Former Primitive Methodist Chapel, Queen Street, Mosborough

The former Primitive Methodist Chapel at 36/38 Queen Street, Mosborough, was built in 1830 by the local community on land purchased for £19 10s from Job Allen (1772-1853), publican and maltster of the White Hart Inn, Eckington. Allen had acquired the land from the Crown Estate in 1828 when the Manor of Eckington was released for sale upon the open market.

The Primitive Methodist movement was founded in 1811 by Hugh Bourne and William Clowes in Staffordshire. They emphasized evangelism, outreach to the working class, and open-air preaching and quickly gained popularity among rural and industrial communities, such as Mosborough. The chapel was built before any of the present chapels in the Sheffield Circuit with the aid of a mortgage of £100 from Sheffield solicitor and land surveyor John Haywood of 19 Paradise Square, Sheffield.

The modest, stone-faced building is simple and functional, distinguished by the keystone arch over the entrance, which reflects the movement’s emphasis on humility and accessibility. The accommodation rapidly became too small for its congregation and school, leading to efforts to raise funds for expansion. With the help of Sheffield cutlers, Messrs. Gilbert and Jones, the local community raised funds in 1868 to pay off the outstanding debt of £70 preparatory to building a new chapel alongside the existing one. Shortly afterwards, the Old Chapel was converted for use as two cottages.

Presently occupied by the community pharmacy of Gilbert and Armstrong, with a Post Office attached, several former tenants have been recorded at various times.

  • Farewell Woodhead (1877-1948) was a boot and shoe repairer. He was first recorded at 36 Queen Street in the 1912 Edition of Kelly’s Directory of the West Riding of Yorkshire and continued to occupy the premises until his retirement around 1942.
  • At this time (1941), the neighbouring property at No. 38 was tenanted by the British Legion (Mosborough) Branch.
  • Kelly’s Directory of 1924 records that No. 38 Queen Street was occupied by Charles Gee (1872-19480), a former miner who became incapacitated, operating a hardware store.
  • Thomas Henry Bolsover (1872-1949) ran a Fruit and Greengrocery store at No. 38 Queen Street around 1919.
  • The premises are also said to have been occupied by the Eckington Leader, a local newspaper publisher and by the Eckington Co-operative Society.

Following a period of disuse, the building was taken over by building contractors Sloane and Roebuck, who used it as offices with a builders’ yard to the rear. Eventually, the pharmacists Gilbert and Armstrong had it refurbished in 1996 in advance of the transfer of their business from Mosborough High Street.

Mosborough Methodist Church, Chapel Street (built 1888)

Mosborough Methodist Church on Chapel Street is the village’s late-Victorian Wesleyan chapel—solidly built in local stone, modest in scale, and still busy with worship and community life today. Its story sits alongside Mosborough’s other nonconformist landmarks, especially the Primitive Methodist chapel on Queen Street, and helps explain how Methodism shaped village life from the 19th century into the present.

Wesleyan Methodists were active locally by the 19th century; in 1888 the congregation raised a new chapel on Chapel Street (later commonly called “Trinity”). Surviving records and centenary material confirm the 1888 date and continuous activity through the 20th century. Leaders’ Meeting minute books survive from 1891 to 1968, and a centenary booklet—Mosborough Methodist Church: a hundred years, 1888–1988—was produced in 1989.

Around 1900 the church expanded its footprint with a substantial two-storey Sunday School/Church Hall just round the corner on Cadman Street. The hall’s materials and detailing were chosen to match the chapel, giving the site a coherent “campus” feel.

Stand at the gates on Chapel Street and the façade tells you almost everything about late-Victorian Wesleyan taste:

  • A simple gable-front composition in coursed local sandstone, with a centred arched doorway and flanking lancet windows.
  • Above the door, a prominent wheel (rose) window—a favourite Nonconformist motif of the 1880s–90s—signals the main worship space within.
  • The side elevation continues the theme with tall lancets and shallow buttressing; the whole is sturdy rather than showy, built for durability and good acoustics.

When the various Methodist streams united nationally in 1932, the Wesleyan chapel on Chapel Street became Mosborough Methodist Church within what is now the Sheffield Circuit—the arrangement you’ll still find today.

The “Never Fear” Dam and Wheel, Mosborough

Former water powered grinding wheel and water management system

The “Never Fear” dam and former wheel are located on the River Moss, a tributary of the River Rother in Mosborough. Thought to be one of the earliest of several water powered grinding wheels in this district, it was erected before 1634 upon land that was once part of the subsidiary manor of Plumley and Westwell in Eckington, formerly within the county of Derbyshire. ‘Never Fear” dam is located near the hamlet of Ford in the Moss Valley. It is a historic site linked to the valley’s industrial past of water powered edge tool manufacture. In order to power the Never Fear Wheel, water was taken off the River Moss to feed a pond on the north side of the stream. The pond, which still exists (Figure 1) fed by the head goit, had two buildings at its south-eastern end where earthworks probably indicate their site.

Local legend has it that Never Fear Dam was so named since at least 1795 when a group of sickle makers from the nearby village of Ridgeway were walking home through some woods beside the dam one night when they saw a ghost coming towards them. They were horrified but the ghost, which on passing them, spoke to the men, saying “Never Fear” as it disappeared into the darkness.

It is believed that the last firm to use the wheel was John Haslam and Sons, sickle manufacturers, who continued in business for some time after 1900.  A display case of sickles and hooks made by John Haslam (1806-1897) for an exhibition in London in 1854 was on display at the Kelham Island Museum in Sheffield in 1984.

The weir of the dam was washed away one night in the 1920’s, ending the life of the wheel.

Figure 1: “Never Fear” Pond

“The Merchant’s Daughter of Mosborough Hall”

—a 17th-century fictional romance in verse

When Cromwell rode through war-torn lands,
and kings were weighed by common hands,
In Mosborough, where shadows fall,
Stood proud and still the old stone Hall.
The year was sixteen fifty-three,
The realm in flux, yet you loved me.
A scythesmith’s son, my hands were scarred,
But your heart saw past iron hard.
Your father, lord of moss and field,
With banners gold and manor seal’d,
Had sworn no child of forge or flame
Would ever speak his daughter’s name.
But you, in silks of midnight thread,
Would steal away when stars had spread,
To meet beneath the moon’s pale eye
Where Moss Brook ran so soft, so shy.
The smithy glowed with copper light,
As sparks would dance into the night.
You watched me work with quiet pride—
Though duty pulled, you would not hide.
At Mosborough Hall, the tapestries
Hung heavy with old fealties.
Yet in the stillness of your room,
You dreamed not of a lord’s perfume—
But soot and sweat, a hammer’s ring,
And love that dared defy a king.
You wore no crown, nor I a sword,
But oaths were made without a word.
We’d walk through Plumley’s secret wood,
Where none but us and blackbirds stood.
You kissed me there, your fingers laced,
And time itself forgot to race.
The war would end, the peace would pale,
But still you came, despite travail.
Though history turns and power shifts,
It cannot touch where true love lifts.
And now, though centuries have flown,
And moss has thickened over stone,
I feel you still in morning air,
Your voice a hush, forever there.