Record of FULWOOD HISTORY GROUP MEETING 20th November 2025
Present: J.B., A.C., G.C., M.G., M.L., D.M., K.P., J.P.
Discussion included:
1) MG: Scissors, Paper, Stone provisional programme for 2026: interpreting wills, occupations recorded in documents and their significance e.g. gardeners, hierarchy of servants, implications of phrase “country girls preferred” used in newspaper advertisements for servants
2) Ranmoor society catalogue: ongoing progress with this; clarification that archives store original material while local studies library tends to keep printed materials
3) JB shared some extracts from Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society Part I, Oct. 1937 & Part II, Oct. 1938; they give a sense of Fulwood’s remoteness pre-20th century, and of its connection with Derbyshire towns and villages rather than with the town of Sheffield
4) GC shared John Wilson’s The Songs of Joseph Mather (Sheffield, 1862). Mather (1737-1804), a file-cutter, wrote ballads which provide a social commentary of late 18th-century Sheffield; he also wrote a song called The Nether Green Lad which GC read to us; a more recent collection of Mather’s songs is called Seditious Things (Kay and Windle, 2017)
5) KP told us about developments regarding local planning permission
6) Update on Fulwood Spa investigation (AC, ML): more information and images shared; could the features have included a WWII lookout? Were they associated with ski runs?
Next meeting 18th December 2025