Village of the Week: A community that wasn't always Yorkshire and the link to the beheading of Anne Boleyn

But Mosborough, south of the city of Sheffield has a long and strong history.

It has a larger than usual village population, more houses, new houses, businesses, amenities and its location means it does enjoy a degree of rurality but is close to the motorway, main roads, cities, towns and services.

The make up of Mosborough is sustainable too. In some ways more perhaps than the traditional Yorkshire dales and coastal villages that are so sought after.

You can buy a three bedroomed house for £165,000, you can buy a modern apartment for less than that. If you want a detached house on a modern development, you can get one for well under £300,000.

If you want a character house, with history and the fireplace and the wooden beams - you can get that too.

The village today is served by a fair few pubs, a fish and chip shop, sandwich shop, a C of E church, Methodist church and businesses such as an estate agent, hair and beauty salons, interiors shop, takeaways, newsagent, solicitor and off-licence.

One of the pubs of the past has been in the headlines over recent years.

The Royal Oak on High Street, believed to have been between 200 and 300 years old, was demolished in May 2021 without planning permission.

There were calls for the developer to be forced to rebuild the old watering hole brick by brick, but officers at Sheffield Council said technicalities and the threat of fines prevented them from taking that approach despite its loss being described as significant.

Bar 24 argued at the time that it had demolished the pub due to concerns about people breaking into the building and ‘dropping dead’ after gallons of chemicals were dumped at the site. The developer applied successfully for retrospective permission to demolish the pub and build a Co-op and other shops where it had stood.

Police had been called in October 2020 to reports of toxic waste being illegally dumped at the site, with chemicals seeping into the ground and contaminating a house and the grounds next door. The developer said that when a surveyor visited to assess the damage they had to cut the visit short as the fumes coming from the basement were so overpowering.

Work to construct the Co-op is ongoing.

As it stands now, Mosborough used to be a township and included Owlthorpe, Westfield and Waterthorpe and Halfway.

According to the extensively informative local history website, “The Mosborough One Place Study”, in 1837 the village was part of the ecclesiastical parish of Eckington and combined with 33 other Derbyshire parishes to form the Chesterfield Poor Law Union.

The Union was given additional responsibilities by the Public Health Act 1872 and the creation of the Chesterfield Rural Sanitary Authority. This Authority was around until 1894 when it became the Chesterfield Rural District Council.

In 1974 Eckington (including Mosborough) became part of North East Derbyshire District but further local government re-organisation in 1967 saw Mosborough come under Sheffield City Council.

Even more historically, the village was known as Moresburgh, which gradually evolved into Mosburg and later Moresborowe and features in 9th century Anglo Saxon records of Derbyshire land owners.

For generations, indeed centuries, farming was the main way of life but Mosborough was synonymous with the steel industry that dominated Sheffield for so many years.

It was the rapid expansion of the sickle and hook manufacturing trade in the 18th and 19th centuries that would transform the character of Mosborough in subsequent years, says The Mosborough One Place Study.

A sickle was a single-handed agricultural tool with curved blades and used for harvesting or reaping grain crops, or cutting succulent forage for feeding livestock while a hook could cut in one swoop.

While it may have started with individual craftsmen, the industrial movement meant that it developed into big business.

Hutton & Co was based at Ridgeway and founded by The Hutton family in 1760 and operated from several locations. Its main business rival at the time was Thomas Staniforth and Co which was nearer to Hackenthorpe.

Both businesses closed in the 1980s.

But, tools were being used well before this time and the Sheffield Museum contains a number of bones and flint tools unearthed in the area during the 19th century, dating back to the Neolithic period, this shows the area was inhabited long before the Angles settled.

They were British invaders who moved in at the end of the Romanic period around 500AD.

Mosborough Hall is also worth a mention in this account.

Dating back to the 17th century it was once a manor house and is Grade II listed.

The original hall, before it became a hotel as it is today, once belonged to William Carey who was a courtier and favourite of King Henry VIII of England.

Carey was a Gentleman of the Privy chamber, and Esquire of the Body to the King. However, his wife, Mary Boleyn, is known to history as a mistress of King Henry VIII and the sister of Henry's second wife, Anne Boleyn.

Carey’s son, Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon KG PC (March 4 1526 –July 23 1596), was also an English nobleman and courtier but was reportedly born at Mosborough Hall

His aunt, Anne, was very much the lead figure in his young life and she had warship of him while engaged to Henry VIII.

In one of the most famous incidents in Royal history- she was beheaded in May 1536.